


Understanding the Aftermath

by LMX



Series: Understanding [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (those are bruce's), Character Study, Deaf Clint Barton, Gen, Getting to Know Each Other, Post-Movie(s), Pre-lingually deaf character, Suicidal Thoughts, Theta Brain-Wave Frequency Machine, Where Was Clint Barton During Captain America 2?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-26
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-01-10 02:56:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 31,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1153934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LMX/pseuds/LMX
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of the Battle of Manhattan, a collection of people thrown together in impossible circumstances start to try to get to know the man they started out fighting against. (AU based on the backstory provided by Reaching an Understanding)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This series has turned into a monster, but I wasn't going to finish anything if I didn't start posting some of it. I'm starting with the post-movie section because that's what got finished first, but there are parts spanning the entirety of Clint's time with SHIELD if I can pull them together.
> 
> As far as I'm concerned, this series doesn't break film canon at all (although I think Clint and Natasha would have signed when alone together), and I'll hopefully be able to convince you of the same thing as we go along.

If he was going to be honest (and frankly, if he couldn't be honest with himself, who could he?) Bruce had seen the Chitauri as a way out. The last in a long line.

He'd always been a bit of a fatalist, and chaotically thrown together supposed 'superheroes' with personality problems were never going to be a solution to a problem as big as an alien invasion of Manhattan. Not when the alien leader could reach out and possess their people at will, and then use them against their friends.

He was relying on the staff not being strong enough to control the big guy, and on him doing enough damage before he was killed to make a difference to the good guys.

But he'd honestly expected to die.

It was a bit of a shock, then, to wake with bone deep aches and a head full of triumphant roaring. The other guy settled fairly quickly as Bruce's consciousness took over, and he opened his eyes to find himself propped between a wall and what appeared to be someone's shoulder.

He was looking out over a destroyed penthouse, all glass and stone and marble. The glass was broken and the wind at this height whistling through the opening. There wasn't much glass on the floor, which suggested someone had been thrown *out* of here before Hulk had crashed in. He hoped it wasn't someone he knew. Or Thor at least - he was likely to have survived it. The flooring was scuffed and bashed and - in one place - dented in the outline of a man. He hoped that was Loki - there wasn't enough blood around for it to be human. His stomach turned sharply at the thought.

The ugly twist in his core snapped him out of the post-Hulk fugue, and he moved quickly against the aches in every limb to find out who he was leaning against. He wasn't sure who he was most afraid to find, but the until-recently missing Agent Barton was a surprise. He was slumped bonelessly against the wall, his eyes panda-ing in a way that spoke of a skull fracture and a messy streak of blood smearing the wall behind one shoulder.

He had the circulation to bruise, at least, but he was definitely unconscious and in a bad state. Loki hadn't seemed insane enough to send a human SHIELD Agent up against the Hulk, but then maybe he'd just been stalling. The marks in the stone flooring hadn't been made by a man, so Hulk had obviously gotten to him eventually.

Bruce remembered Agent Romanoff's insistence that Agent Barton would be found, the stiff way she'd held herself when she mentioned his capture by Loki's force. She'd made it quite clear he was someone important to her, and Bruce really hoped he hadn't killed her friend on top of threatening her life.

She'd seemed... nice. At the very least, straight forward - unpretentious. He could appreciate that in a Secret Agent.

He found himself wondering how far the team and Loki were now, whether he could disappear before they got back. Outside the broken window, the city was still full of flames, flashing lights and distant sirens as dusk fell. All familiar fallout from Hulk's rampage. Letting him loose in such a populated place had been nothing but a mistake, he'd just released more damage on a city already under attack.

The Agent made a strangled noise and opened his eyes, hand clenching around the limb of a bow that had been tucked in next to his leg. His quiver was against the wall at his elbow, devoid of arrows. Bruce let himself breathe a sigh of relief as the Agent's eyes opened to a natural colour, instead of the vivid Tesseract blue the cameras in Germany had caught.

Fractured images of Hulk's adventures were slowly making themselves known - Bruce always got more back from the exchange when he let the other guy loose instead of being dragged out. He didn't remember getting the Agent back, that must have happened while he was away from the bulk of the fighting, but the archer had been there with the others when Bruce had arrived in Manhattan, and during the battle Hulk had seen his arrows and been tickled by small-stinger-make-smash.

Bruce shook off the thought not his own, moving back so he wasn't looming, and waited for the other man to scan his surroundings carefully as he shifted into a slightly more upright position. His brief window for escape was closing, but it looked like Agent Barton wouldn't be up for much of a chase if he decided to bolt now.

"Doctor Banner?" The agent's voice was far from the clipped military tones Bruce had been expecting, and it took a couple of minutes of worry over a potentially very serious head injury before he noticed the discrete behind-the-ear hearing aids the agent was wearing. He wasn't going to dismiss a possible symptom, not on top of the visible bruising, but for now the agent's gaze was sharp and clear, and he wasn't going to jump to conclusions when he hadn't heard the man speak before.

"Agent Barton?" he replied, putting aside the idea of running for a minute, and sitting so that he was facing the agent in case he needed to lip read. "I'm assuming Agent Romanoff managed to free you from Loki's influence?"

"She hit me over the head a couple of times," he shrugged inelegantly, smearing the blood from his shoulder. "Seemed to work."

Bruce couldn't help but grin at that. "Well... congratulations," he said. "Where did the others go?"

"They're taking Loki and the... cube?"

"Tesseract," Bruce offered.

Barton shrugged, then nodded. "Yeah, the cube back to SHIELD."

"You didn't want to join them?" Bruce pressed, still not sure what to make of the strange way he'd woken up. Had Barton passed out leaning on Hulk, or had he been normal-sized by then?

"Cap told me to watch you. But you're... you," Barton gestured vaguely with his free hand - the other still white-knuckled around his bow. "I think Natasha wanted me to stay away from SHIELD, in case Fury wants to put me in a box."

"You do look like you could do with a rest," Bruce couldn't help but agree, taking in his position still heavily leaning on the wall. He didn't look like he could have moved if he wanted to.

"You don't look roses yourself," he retorted, but didn't move from his slump. Bruce found himself quickly inventorying his clothes, reassured that he was still covered enough for company, and wondered if Barton could see from his posture how much he was aching. He glanced past Bruce, nodding towards the divot-marked floor. "I wanted to thank you for that."

"Loki?" Bruce guessed, taking another look at the marks.

"Yeah. I didn't get to watch, but the look on his face when he crawled out of his hole... it was enough." Clint nodded, eyes half-mast as if he was thinking of passing out again. Bruce wondered if maybe that wasn't the best idea, given his injuries.

"Barton..." he started, but was interrupted.

"I could recall that video for you, sirs, if you wished to review it?" Bruce was too tired to really react to a disembodied voice, but he looked up to try and find the speakers. Realisation came a moment later, with the recollection of a glossy magazine piece on Stark's Malibu mansion.

"Are you Stark's AI?" he asked the room at large.

"I'm fine," Barton replied distractedly, establishing more firmly in Bruce's mind that he was lip-reading more than he was hearing.

The archer was in the process of pushing himself more upright, smearing more blood on the walls as he did so, when the AI replied; "Yes, Dr. Banner. I am JARVIS." There was a brief pause. "Sir suggested that my observation, in addition to that provided by Agent Barton, may be prudent, given your respective conditions at his time of departure."

Barton had his eyes tightly shut, his lips white and thin against whatever pain the shift in position had caused. "I think that was probably a good idea," Bruce agreed. "Thank you."

"Sorry, Banner. I'm out again," Barton said, promptly passing out. Bruce caught hold of his arm before he toppled and moved to provide a shoulder in support, effectively putting them back in the position he'd woken to.

"I apologise for not being of more use, Dr. Banner," JARVIS offered apologetically. "I'm afraid much of my processing power is currently being taken up by maintaining building security and structural integrity, and in monitoring the Iron Man suit. My mechanical and production systems are currently in some disrepair after their overly-hasty production of the Mark VII." A door at the end of the room opened to display a slightly smoking engineering rig which looked vaguely like a red and gold explosion had gone off in the back of it - oil or some other viscous material was dripping from one edge and bare wires hanging loose, occasionally sparking. As if in embarrassment, the door slowly shut again, hiding the unit.

"What happened there?" Bruce asked, feeling vaguely bemused at the conversational tone this exchange had taken.

"Sir demanded the use of his most advanced Iron Man suit. It was not quite at a functional level of manufacture, as his focus has been on the Tower itself, which was only just completed to previously published deadlines. Fortunately I was able to ensure full functionality just as Sir exited the building, and was able to catch him as he fell. Sir has been... easily distracted, of late."

"So you tore yourself apart to have a half made suit of armour ready in time for Stark to jump out of a window? I hope he appreciates you, JARVIS." Bruce leant his head back against the wall, chuckling at the image of Stark returning home to dote on his caring, if disapproving AI.

"To be honest, Dr. Banner, it was somewhat of a relief to register the chaos outside the tower defences. Sir has been known to throw himself from high places with less reason." JARVIS had taken on a rather scathing tone, but after a hesitation, he added; "Although on this occasion I feel it only fair to note that he was thrown."

Bruce glanced at the shattered windows, and wondered how on Earth an empty Iron Man suit had managed to catch a thrown man with a head start. "Aren't you in his suit?" he asked, thinking back on what JARVIS had just said. "Why didn't you know about what was going on out there already?"

"A separate operating system, sir. Memory storage units are only synchronised upon return to a base module unless otherwise requested. Given the emerging threat, and the unexpected draw of Arc Reactor power, priorities have been elsewhere, and the suit which returned from the initial action has considerable damage to the data exchange hardware."

"So I wouldn't be able to ask you exactly what happened out there?" Bruce asked hopefully.

"I'm afraid not first hand, sir." There was a long pause, and Bruce thought maybe that was that, JARVIS would go back to its... his? priorities. "Although," he continued unexpectedly, loading a video screen on a piece of glass which was still intact. "National news networks are mentioning a missile, directed by Sir into the portal at approximately the time of the collapse of the alien force. That was followed by your other self catching Sir, which has been well documented by amateur photographers and social media sites, and the subsequent deactivation of the portal by Dr. Selvig and Agent Romanoff. At that time, you all returned here to monitor Mr. Loki until he regained consciousness."

Bruce let the videos cycling on the screens that JARVIS had loaded sink in, watching again and again as Hulk slammed Iron Man out of the air and took him to the ground. He walked away, Bruce reminded himself, as that image played again. Tony Stark walked away from that. "Well..." he coughed as the lump in his throat caught. "That's a hell of a lot more than I knew. Thank you, JARVIS."

"You're welcome, sir. I believe Agent Barton is regaining consciousness, and the rest of the Avengers Initiative are on their way in."

"The what?" Bruce mumbled, but was distracted by Tony's voice in the hall outside.

Barton had pulled away, so Bruce stood to meet the others - not sure whether Loki would be with them, whether Hulk would be needed again. He was just stepping away from the wall when Thor strode in. He bit down on his startle response, harder because he was so tired, and made himself stand still.

Even the demigod looked a little battered, his cloak tattered and a bandage wrapped messily around his midsection - over the top of his armour, as if he hadn't even bothered to move it out of the way long enough for medical attention. Bruce glanced back at Barton and found him standing, if still leaning heavily on the wall, Agent Romanoff was limping heavily as she crossed the room to stand beside him, blood still marking her face. This team were going to be a nightmare of medical hangups, he could tell already.

"Good friends!" Thor boomed, his tone subdued even if his volume wasn't. "My brother has been again detained by the might of your world, his staff taken from him and the Tesseract secured. Heimdall assures me that he can use the Tesseract and three of our most powerful mages to transmit us to Asguard, where Loki will be imprisoned, but this will need to take place at the point of our two worlds' closest daily convergence."

"Three pm, tomorrow," Stark put in, reading from a tablet. "According to Dr. Foster." The faceplate on his armour was up, and looking closely Bruce could see where a couple of the chest plates were misaligned, and the paint job was slapdash - with dribbles of paint in some places and patches missing in others. The fact that JARVIS had considered the paint essential for function struck him as very funny.

"My dearest Jane - you have her here?" Thor demanded, turning on Stark.

As the crowd devolved into a quest to explain the communications technology of their world - Midguard, apparently - and Thor took the tablet in careful hands to Skype with his girlfriend on the other end, Bruce sidled away from the middle of the room where he'd been uncomfortably pinned under Thor's impressive gaze.

Captain Rogers was peering over Tony's shoulder with curiosity at the mobile device, and Stark was filling them all in on the details they really didn't need to know.

This was his chance, his moment to disappear. Possibly his last chance before SHIELD or the Army or some other group swarmed in and tried to lay claim to him. The Agents might notice, and that might be a problem... Or it might not, he thought, meeting Barton's gaze briefly and getting an accepting nod.

With no further conversation, the two Agents turned to face one another, casual and discrete, putting him out of their direct line of sight.

It was a hell of an act of faith on their parts, given Agent Romanoff hadn't let him out of her sight willingly in all the time he'd known her - and then he'd attacked her, which pretty much justified her distrust.

Stark's attention was too sharp, though - and he looked up at Bruce and announced; "So! Shwarma! 'We survived' celebration and all that. Brucie - you're coming, right? All that smashing and grabbing - you must be starving!"

It wasn't really a question, but to his own surprise and maybe Stark's too, he found himself agreeing. He was hungry - oddly so, when a day like today would usually have him sick to his stomach - and he knew in a way he never had before, against all odds, today he had allies. Today the *Hulk* had allies.

And who knows, maybe one of them would be able to tell him what the hell had just happened.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was going to be Clint-meets-Tony, and turned into Clint-meets-JARVIS.

Clint was the kind of exhausted that came from days of frenetic life-or-death exercise, not enough to drink or eat, two decent blows to the head and an icing of losing someone you loved like family and being told he couldn't return to the only place he'd known as home.

Still, with all the glass taken out of his shoulder and his concussion more or less gone, Natasha was the one running a fever and she wanted icepops, so he was on a scavenger hunt in Stark's excessive tower.

Their kitchen - well, the kitchen Stark had assigned as Natasha's, but Clint wasn't feeling a great urge to be alone right now and the space that Stark had assigned to them both was obscenely large - had been devoid of frozen juice, and Natasha had made a disgusted face when he'd offered icecream instead, so he was making this first foray into the collective team space since he'd passed out on the bar's floor with the Hulk.

He'd not been brave enough to face Stark or the rest of the team that had been thrown together beyond their team-building banishing of Clint's worst nightmare. He wasn't entirely sure why Stark had offered them a place to stay, really. There were files on all of their supposed 'team' on the laptop Natasha had pushed his way, but Clint was too jittery, and his patience too short for reading personnel files. He figured they'd probably been read up on, though - Natasha and him. If Stark was as jacked into SHIELD as he appeared, they probably had access to everything there was to know about him.

The microwave screen flashed brightly in the corner of his eye, pulling his attention out of the six-foot freezer he'd been searching. He watched as the screen scrolled the message; "Agent Barton, sir is trying to get your attention." He caught sight of Stark reflected in the microwave's glass door as he was reading, and whirled to face him.

Stark was talking - of course, when was he not - but looked surprised when Clint turned. It didn't stop him talking though, and Clint was lost without context, and fuck he'd forgotten how much he hated moustaches. At least Stark's facial hair was tidy enough to keep his lips clear, not that it was helping right now.

He waved his hand to get him to stop, shaking his head. "Sorry," he said carefully, talking like he would to Hill or Fury - slow, careful enunciation. "I missed that." It was so easy to be lazy with Natasha or... or Phil. People who just understood, who knew his way of talking, and didn't give him crazy-eyes like Stark was now.

"You didn't sound like that before," Stark said, his eyes narrowing.

"In the field I use voice synth," Clint offered, tipping his head back to show the strange tan-line on his neck the vocal strip left behind. "Saves confusion."

"Confusion," Stark repeated, and Clint wondered whether he was trying to correct his pronunciation. "Yeah, I can see that. So you're... what, deaf?"

Stark kept gesturing vaguely, and Clint had to convince his tired mind not to track his hands. He nodded at the question, vaguely surprised he didn't know that already, hoping Stark would go away now he had an answer so Clint could go back to hiding in Natasha's room like a child. After the last week, he felt he deserved some hiding time.

"Natasha wants icepops," he said, hoping it would give him an out. This time Stark really did look blank, and Clint signed the word once in frustration before repeating it out loud.

"I don't... something in the freezer, right?" Stark tried, gesturing to the still open door that was radiating cold. "Can you spell it?"

Clint wasn't in the mood for fucking spelling challenges right now, his mind had gone blank as to how the word was written and he was stuck trying to picture the side of the box.

Stark looked up at the ceiling, like Sitwell did when he was exasperated, and then pushed past Clint to get to the freezer, digging in a drawer Clint hadn't searched yet and holding a box of icepops up like a trophy.

He was still talking, or he'd starting again while he was facing the freezer, and Clint didn't even bother trying to catch up without context. He pried the brightly coloured box from Stark's hands and muttered "Thank you," when he stopped to take a breath.

He was half way across the kitchen towards the door - and escape - when a screen lit up on the wall in front of him. On the screen, a guy Clint recognised from one of the better online ASL video dictionaries signed; "Hello, my name is J-A-R-V-I-S," in a series of well-spliced together video clips.

"Hello Jarvis," Clint signed back, bemused. Stark, when Clint glanced his way, had a big grin on his face, and a glass of something amber-coloured in his hand, obscene-shaped icecubes floating on the surface.

"So now you've met Jarvis," he said, gesturing to the screen with his glass. Clint was making an assumption on the name from the finger-spelling to Stark's lips.

"Where is... he?" Clint asked, not willing to risk a new name. People were so touchy about mispronouncing their names.

"He's an..." Tony kept talking, but beyond confirmation that Jarvis was a he, Clint didn't get much more information. Habit made him glance back towards the screen - the position of the signer in the room - hoping for a save. Whoever Jarvis was on the other end of the screen, he could use a video dictionary.

"I am an AI," the screen said, not really making anything clearer. Jarvis must have been able to read something in his expression - or maybe Clint was making assumptions, he hadn't responded to anything Clint had said or signed so far - because after a beat he added; "An intelligent computer. I protect Mr. Stark and his friends." The word order was more spoken English than ASL, but Clint was signing with a computer, the thought was mind-blowing. The video faded out and the text: 'JARVIS' loaded on the screen, subtitled with 'Just Another Really Very Intelligent System' and followed with a phonetic spelling.

He was talking to a computer... an intelligent computer, which could sign better than its master, grammar notwithstanding, which seemed... wrong somehow. How did you talk to a computer? He put the box of icepops back down on the sideboard to free up his hands; they had leeched cold into his fingers and he rubbed his hand hard on his jeans to get rid of the feeling.

"Nice to meet you... JARVIS," Clint said out loud, wishing he had a facial expression to judge his pronunciation of the name by (or mispronunciation, as the case may be). He glanced at Tony, but he was just leaning against the freezer door, looking amused - maybe he was making a fool of himself, addressing the computer, maybe Stark had a terminal on him somewhere, feeding into the screen. He turned to the screen, giving Stark his back; "Do you read sign?" he asked with his hands.

"Yes, but understanding would depend on location, angle, line-of-sight," JARVIS signed in reply. "I will improve over time."

Clint grinned, more sure now that he was having a conversation with a separate entity, he *knew* Stark didn't sign.

"How do I find your... eyes?" Clint signed, still facing the screen for want of a better direction. Above the screen a red light flashed three times before going dark again. He couldn't see any camera there, or even evidence of the light that had flashed.

"I have many eyes," the screen signed back at him, a little creepily. "If you need help, ask and I will reply."

Stark tapped his arm, making him startle a little, and gestured at the box on the sideboard. "They're melting," he observed, and wandered past Clint into the hall.

Gathering up Natasha's prize, Clint headed back to their rooms, signing "Goodnight, JARVIS," as he passed the camera. Living with Stark really was going to be a sci-fi experience all in itself.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is long and rambly, I'm sorry. One of these days I'll get something action-y into this series.
> 
> Incidentally, is there anyone out there who would be willing to beta? It's getting to the point where this series really needs a second look.

Steve took a seat in the empty briefing room, toying with the short stack of briefing packets. He considered putting one in front of each seat, but he'd worked with people who preferred to stand through briefings and others who wouldn't take the packet until the end to avoid letting themselves get distracted from what was being said. Better to have them to hand, give him a chance to engage each person as they came through the door.

He was too early, he thought five minutes later, he should have waited. He could have had more time putting the briefing together with the teams from Analytical and Tactics. He hadn't even checked it for spelling errors. A good gaffe could bring a group together, but not if they hadn't built up a rapport beforehand. One of the techs had said the computer would check the text for him, but he couldn't see how the computer would know what he meant to write. That said, he was about to brief two of the greatest minds he'd met in this century - spelling errors or not, who knew what they'd make of his war-styled briefings. Half the stuff he'd included was probably general knowledge, or so dated as to be irrelevant.

Natasha was the first through the door, five minutes before the scheduled time. She took a seat opposite him and gestured for one of the stack of folders. He slid one across to her, trying not to tense up as she pulled a notepad from somewhere and started scribbling notes as she paged through it. He resisted the urge to look at what she was writing, barely. He could ask for feedback after the threat was done.

A suited man Steve didn't know was next through the door, taking a seat next to Natasha without any greeting, apparently in a rush as he gestured for a packet. Steve handed a folder across the table on the basis that Natasha didn't seem concerned at his presence, and took a moment to be glad he'd printed a couple of spares.

"I've started a vocab list," Natasha said, already turning to the last page. "But you'll like Steve, he's easy to follow." She snuck Steve a smile, and Steve managed to return it, even if he wasn't sure exactly what she meant by that.

"Thanks," the stranger - agent? - said tersely, still reading. He reached the end and closed the folder, sitting back in his seat as he took the notepad from Natasha. He gave it a glance over before looking up at Steve properly for the first time. "And thank you, Captain. This is one of the best formatted briefing packets I've had to work with."

The intense eye contact was a little unnerving to Steve, but the praise gave him a flood of warmth, "You're welcome," he said, willing himself not to blush. "I'm sorry, Agent - you are?"

"Jonah Donahough, no Agent. Don't mind me," he waved his hand dismissively. "I'm support staff for Agent Barton. Pretend I'm not even here."

"I don't..." Steve started, wanting to go with 'know what that means', but was interrupted as Tony walked in backwards, already talking a mile a minute at Clint, following two steps behind him.

Tony stopped talking - something about explosives? Steve wasn't sure he wanted to know - as Clint stepped around him, and muttered "Fine, don't listen to me then," at the back of his head as Clint pulled Jonah into a hug, then stepped back an arm's length and started... huh. So... sign language.

Steve watched carefully as Natasha got involved, trying to pull meaning out of the gestures by sheer willpower.

"You getting any of that, Stars-and-Stripes?" Tony asked, invading his personal space to pick up a briefing packet. Steve resisted the urge to sigh pointedly, Tony Stark pulled all the most childish aspects of his personality to the fore.

"Did we know that Agent Barton was hard of hearing?" he asked instead. "Should I know that?"

"Think it might be one of those things enough people around here know, everyone forgets to mention," Tony shrugged, taking the seat next to him and tipping it back obnoxiously to put one foot on the edge of the table. "Maybe now we're having an actual briefing we'll be... y'know, briefed."

Director Fury strode into the room with an over-dramatised swirl of his coat. Bruce was a step behind him and Assistant Director Hill was hemming him in with a purposeful stride. Bruce was exuding 'not here' as he took a seat on Tony's other side, shoulders rounded and barely glancing up from the table as Tony pushed a briefing packet his way. The body language made Steve wonder what Fury had said to him before they stepped through the door. Fury and Hill stood at the head of the table, not even considering taking the seats left for them, and Steve noticed that Jonah had left the seat next to Natasha, with the packet still open on the desk and Natasha's notebook next to it, to Clint and was stood at Fury's shoulder, hands held loosely by his sides.

Fury eyed the stack of briefing notes - properly assigned, initialled and dated, Steve had done his reading - and then took a slow glare around the table.

"Captain Rogers has been briefed on the situation," he said, his voice flat and calm, "But I want to remind you that you're a strike team and we're trying to keep you of of the hands of the World Security Council. You go in, you strike, then you come home. You do not sit around for a party in the aftermath. SHIELD will handle clean up and triage, and there will be a medical unit available to you if you need it, but once you're done I want you gone."

"Sir, yes sir," Tony drawled, earning an exasperated look from Steve, and the smallest of lip-curls from Bruce, his head ducking to hide it.

"Do we need to be worrying about the Council, sir?" Steve asked, once his attention was back on Fury.

"They've been targeting Doctor Banner since the Battle," Hill offered, when it was obvious Fury wasn't going to say anything. "And we know they've been trying to pull your personnel files off our servers, but so far we've managed to keep them off your backs."

Steve turned to Bruce, concerned. "Doctor Banner?" he pressed.

Bruce looked up as if surprised to be addressed. He pushed his glasses up his nose nervously before explaining; "I've had messages claiming to be from people here at SHIELD, Director Fury included, calling me to various locations. JARVIS has been very helpful in identifying the false information, but we don't think they know where I've been hiding out."

"The WSC has access to SHIELD's personnel directory already," Natasha pointed out, glancing at Clint and then back at Fury. "Do they know Barton and I were part of the attack?"

"They have the public files on the Avengers Initiative," Fury conceded. "You'll have noticed you haven't been undercover recently, and Agent Barton has been reduced to wet-work. We're trying to get around their attention."

"We thought we'd earned the holiday," Natasha said wryly, and Clint snorted a laugh.

"Once we've worked out how to get you clear of the Council you'll be back on duty, Romanoff, don't get comfy." Fury did another careful scan of the table. "Anything you see that doesn't look right, you report it back to Hill or me. No one else. I'll leave you with Hill and Rogers..." Fury paused, almost bracing himself, and added; "Good luck out there today."

Steve wondered what it had taken him so say it, and why. His attention caught on the tense line of Natasha and Clint's shoulders, and thought about the eager grin of Agent Coulson. Fury swirled out of the room with his shoulders high and defensive, and Hill stepped forwards.

"We're on the clock, so we'll have to leave the making nice for later," Hill started quickly, her no-nonsense tone making Steve straighten in his seat. "Captain Rogers has been with Analysis and Ground Tactics and he has a brief for you, I'll leave mission control over to him and will plan to do so on all Avengers missions. In the mean time, I feel obliged to cover everything we missed the first time around, given the extenuating circumstances."

"Fire exits?" Tony interrupted. "Evacuation protocols? I thought throwing the Hulk out of the window worked quite well last time."

Hill didn't even bother glaring. "I'm not going to bother introducing Mr. Stark, but Iron Man is flight capable and weaponised, expect to use him for aerial defence and limited ranged offence."

"Limited?"

"Shut up, Tony," Natasha said firmly.

"Black Widow is infiltration and espionage, hand to hand and short range weapons where required. She's your skilled operative, do _try_ to use that instead of throwing her repeatedly at a wall of goons, however good at that she might be.

"Hawkeye is long range offence, and aerial support and tactics. In heavy fighting he will not keep track of comms chatter, so try to keep the chatter to a minimum. He's also your pilot.

"Banner is technical support and backup. Unless things get serious I don't expect to hear you calling out the backup, understand? We're hoping to get the to bottom of why every gamma source on the planet seems to be linked to localised crazy right now, but until we do all objects of interest and data retrieved go to Bruce in the jet or nearest command unit.

"The Captain is your tactics and ground support, team leader in the field. All questions, challenges, problems go to him. I don't want to hear it. We're working on assigning a liaison, but Agent Coulson's death has left a hole and we're not in a position to fill it."

"Are you happy with me ordering around your Agents, Ma'am?" Steve asked carefully, feeling the brittle tension that had settled around the table at the naming of their missing friend.

"They'll tell you if any order goes against any other they've received, but they'll continue to take missions for SHIELD," Hill replied, her sharp gaze turned on him.

"If they're abroad or embedded in another organisation when the call to Assemble comes?" Steve pressed.

"They will extract themselves, Avengers work will by its nature be serious enough to call a halt to any other mission."

"And Thor?" Bruce interrupted this time.

"We've heard nothing, but his contacts in this realm have our number, and motivation enough to call us if he does appear. We can't anticipate he'll be on hand in any given situation." Hill took a deep breath, visibly checking through some mental list. She nodded once and then finished; "I understand that the nature of an Avengers mission makes it hard, but please try to keep yourself off the radar for this one, there's only so much interference we can run with the WSC, and they are supposed to be our civilian oversight. That doesn't work if we keep pissing them off."

She didn't wait for their acknowledgement, just stepped away from the table and then followed Fury out into the hall.

Steve took a deep breath, considered standing for a moment before flipping to the page of briefing notes and pushing himself forward. "Alright, that ran long so I'll keep this short. We'll have time to read the brief on the jet, and I'll ask you to save questions for then too." Natasha looked up from her file and Clint shot him a frown a beat later, but Steve willed them to be patient. "We have a strong gamma signal in rural Canada and six to twelve large men storming around attacking military bases and larger towns. They appear to be on foot between attacks, moving slowly, which is why we aren't briefing in the air, but so far they've been impervious to any military hardware Canada has brought to bear."

Steve stormed through possible background, likely targets and their tactics on arrival, mindful of the usual levels of chaos implicit in any battlefield. Bruce was frowning nervously, and Clint appeared to be speed-reading the file in front of him and ignoring his interpretor.

"Last thing," he said, watching curiously as Natasha nudged Clint in the side and he looked up. "The Director has said it, AD Hill has said it, now I'm saying it. We're not going to be able to hide that we've been called in, but we don't want to drag this mess home, so no show-boating, no messing around, and once we're done we head back here for debrief."

"And the Tower after," Tony added, dropping his chair down onto all four legs with a clatter. "Even if you're not already staying. There's beds and food and I can probably scrape together a medical kit if we need one. We'll make it a party."

"Thank you, Stark," Steve said, trying to muffle his irritation at being interrupted with honest gratitude. It was always nice to be able to think of the after-party. "Okay everyone, gear up. Quinjet in fifteen." Steve took a breath as everyone started to stand, and added; "Clint, Jonah, would you mind staying a moment, please?" Steve tried to put on an amiable face as Clint's expression shuttered. He glanced at Natasha, and shook his head in reply to whatever she signed his way. Steve had some reading to do when they got home.

She stood with the others, hesitating before she passed Jonah, "We'll see you soon?"

"Of course. Thanks for your help today. Safe travelling."

Steve waited for the room to empty completely, parsing what he wanted to say, checking for potential offence that might be caused. He really wanted to start this thing on the right foot, but the new information had thrown him, and offending their long range specialist on the first real mission was not the way to go. "I know you want to get prepped, and as pilot I know that gives you less time to cover the briefing notes on the jet, thanks for waiting," he started.

"Only for you, Captain," Clint replied, eyebrow raised. It was the first time Steve had heard Clint speak outside of the battle, and he was a little taken aback at the odd shape to his words. Clint was watching him speak, not looking to Jonah, and Steve had too many questions to even start.

"We've not been offered a personnel briefing, and the documents I've seen so far have been public access. I..."

"You want to know about me?" Clint interrupted, smirking.

"It wasn't the conversation I'd planned on today, but could you tell me a little more about your hearing?"

"Eighty five decibel hearing loss," his hand gestured 'more or less', "Both ears. Umm..." Clint tugged at his ears a moment, before turning his head so that Steve could see the remarkably small piece of technology hooked over his ear and tucked in behind. "Hearing aids..." he offered, with a vague expression of disgust. "If it's quiet, they're useful - footsteps, engines, alarms... I don't... I can hear you talking but I won't understand. If it's noisy..." Clint made a dismissive gesture. "It's all distraction. I turn them off."

"You say you won't understand?" Steve started, watching Clint's eyes slide from his lips back to Jonah for clarification. Whatever Jonah said, Clint signed back, and Steve glanced to Jonah, not sure if he was missing something. He was in time to see Jonah roll his eyes at Clint, shaking his head.

"Clint doesn't have good aural comprehension," Jonah offered, looking at Clint not Steve as he spoke, one hand moving around his mouth with the words. It didn't look like the sign language he'd been using before, and Steve was gaining questions faster than Clint was answering them. "He needs to be able to see your face to know what you're saying."

"I lipread," Clint offered. "Jonah or Tas do briefings. Rules say I have to wear these," he tapped the back of his ear, "On base and on missions." He shrugged eloquently. "I don't understand speech with them."

"Understood," Steve nodded. "In future I'd like to take some time before briefings to talk one-on-one, give you a chance to go over my tactics, raise any issues. This is a learning experience for me, so I'm hoping you'll be able to help me out."

Steve wasn't sure what he'd said, but Clint was suddenly bristling. "I don't need my hand held, sir."

Steve shook his head at the misunderstanding. "I do," he emphasised. "The technology here is new to me, and I don't know anything about how this team will work in the field - how our comms work, how our weapons work. We were lucky in Manhattan, very lucky. Director Fury has told me about the... the bomb they sent to Manhattan, the one Stark redirected. I didn't even..." Steve swallowed down the reflexive horror that he came back to every time he remembered Fury's surprisingly gentle explanation. "My lack of knowledge could get any one of you killed, Clint. I need more information - tactical support - if I'm going to be able to lead this team with any kind of hope of success."

Clint's eyes were narrow and suspicious, "Why me?"

"Have you seen the rest of this team?" Steve asked, his lips twisting at the despairing tone he'd adopted without thinking.

"Tasha would take offence at that," Clint replied, but he was smiling now. "But you're right, Stark and Banner weren't made for team tactics."

"I was under the impression Agent Romanoff was covert operations, a one-woman spy unit? I need tactical advice, Clint, I've read enough of the team's backgrounds to know that's you, but I didn't know how comfortable you'd be speaking in front of the team."

Clint's lips twisted wryly. "You got *really* close to a compliment there, Cap."

"Did you get enough time to read through the briefing?" Steve said with a grin of his own.

"Yes, sir," Clint replied, standing.

He nodded, then gestured for the door. "Gear up, let's go."


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Massive thanks to my hardworking betas, neyronrose and kiragecko, who have helped me reconstruct this chapter from the messy rubble in my brain.

Natasha ducked as a tree went flying past her head, mentally running through all the ways she could tell Steve that 'large men' was not an adequate descriptor for people the size of the Hulk, dressed in oversized camo gear and flack jackets.

From their uniforms, whatever they were now, it was obvious that these men had once been Canadian Military.

Six to twelve had turned out to be twenty-three aggressors, moving in two distinct squads as they tag teamed one another through the countryside. That suggested they were acting under some kind of instructions or higher purpose. As soon as one group had come up against the Avengers all other plans had been laid aside and they'd all come together to express their displeasure in being held up. By throwing trees.

"Two more breaking cover at your one o'clock, Cap," Clint called from the water tower on the edge of town where he'd set up his nest.

Natasha glanced towards Steve, making sure he had a handle on the new targets before storming back towards her own opponent, knife in hand. Weapons with slow-moving sharp edges seemed to be the only way to take the super-sized soldiers. Fortunately, Natasha was a big fan of sharp edges.

She ducked and rolled as the next tree was used as a bludgeon, and made a sprint for her target's legs. Stark buzzed past as she took out the giant's oversized hamstrings, and left him thrashing on the ground. She was already looking for her next target, hands tensing around the blade as she moved. Steve had the two most recent giants to break cover on the ground, his shield thrumming back through the air towards him. Like her, he was already scanning the treeline for more. Unlike her, he wasn't even trying to hide the fact that he was enjoying himself. He wasn't whooping and shouting like Stark, but there was a hint of real satisfaction in his movements.

Natasha stepped up alongside him, waiting for his next instruction. This kind of fighting wasn't her forté, but she trusted the Captain to know where to put her to use. "Hawkeye, give me location on the next group," Steve demanded as the Hulk wrestled another soldier to the ground to join the ones he'd already body-slammed into unconsciousness.

There was a hesitation, and Natasha turned to watch Clint scan the area carefully, purple-tinted sunglasses reflecting enough to hide his eyes. It was clear from the grin on his face he was enjoying himself too. "Small group straight ahead," he came back. "Six more heading North, not being quiet."

"Not being quiet?" Tony parroted back, with a tone of disbelief. Natasha shot him an amused glance, but his face-mask was pointed in Clint's direction.

"Treefall, lots of birds taking off," Clint replied, missing Tony's snark completely. "They're moving fast."

"Are they flanking us?" Steve demanded, and Natasha noticed him shoot Tony a glare as he settled back on the ground during the momentary peace.

"Could be," Clint agreed.

Hulk bellowed at one of his opponents who had the gall to try and get back up, and Natasha quashed the urge to put Steve and Tony between them. She tried to stare into the undergrowth of the stand of trees, looking for movement.

The next group broke through the trees a moment later and the first one fell to his knees with an arrow in his eye, matching Hulk's volume with his shouts. Tony dove in and punched the arrow the rest of the way into the giant's skull, cutting off the scream and having to change direction sharply as another soldier grabbed at him.

"Hawkeye, can you get the attention of the northbound group?" Steve demanded as Tony whooped at the near miss, the supersoldier already lining up his shield for the moment Tony was clear.

"If that was my name you need to come again," Clint's tone was frustrated even through the tech, and Natasha glanced his way in time to see him draw again. "Too many people talking." Another arrow landed, this time in the eye of the furthest soldier. A small suppressed explosion followed, and the soldier fell silently with an expression of shock.

"He shoots, he scores!" Tony crowed as he body-slammed a soldier into a solid tree, diving up and away as his opponent surged forwards with barely any hesitation.

"Stark, shut up," Steve snapped, waiting for Tony's sharp glare before repeating, "Hawkeye, draw the attention of the stragglers far north."

"Wilco." A series of small explosions peppered the area to the north moments later, and the last group of soldiers burst from the treeline, charging their way, oversized features fixed and angry.

Hulk seemed to see the charge as some kind of invitation, and started running towards them, ignoring the shield that spun over one of his shoulders and the arrow that skirted the other, and barrelling into the remaining soldiers. The others found themselves sitting back and watching as Hulk slammed heads together and made a mess of the few trees still standing after the combined onslaught.

"Containment on the way for any aggressor still breathing," Hill's voice cut in over Hulk's near-gleeful violence. "ETA five minutes."

Natasha scanned the group carefully, taking in the dent in the Iron Man suit's chest plate and the rip in Cap's suit that probably matched up with some good bruising beneath.

Despite the ruin of the farm land and trees that had been their battlefield, they hadn't done too badly for their first planned mission. Granted the actual plan had more or less been abandoned the moment Bruce had stumbled out of the jet to add his bigger self to the fray - but they'd managed to keep it more or less contained.

"I feel bad," Clint said as he rejoined the group, bow bouncing on his hip. Hulk snorted at the large carrier settling on the far side of the field, biohaz and containment crews already spilling out. Steve caught hold of his wrist and started leading them all back towards the jet they'd flown in, leaving SHIELD to explain to the locals what had just happened. "They were like badly behaved kids."

Tony started to object, citing the dents in his suit, but was distracted when Hulk dropped to his ass outside the jet's rear door and started shrinking. Natasha watched carefully, seeing the vulnerability in the change, still trying to reach a point where she could look at the process without fear. Steve had a pair of sweat pants and a shirt ready when Bruce opened his eyes groggily a couple of minutes later, and Natasha took his arm to help him unsteadily to a seat.

"Maybe SHIELD can help the survivors," Steve offered, his smile hopeful. Clint nodded and bumped his fist against Steve's bicep as he passed, stowing his quiver and his bow before climbing into the pilot's seat.

"And we will look into that later," Tony agreed, his suit falling away as the hatch closed behind him and everyone took a seat. "But right now... dinner. Right?"

"Debriefing first," Steve said firmly, stowing his shield and pushing his cowl back. "Then food."

"Spoilsport," Tony grumbled, taking the seat next to Bruce and poking at the scientific console that hadn't seen much use this mission. "I bet you always handed in your homework on time, too."

Steve smirked, putting on his best schoolteacher voice. "SHIELD hasn't specified whether they want written reports from us, but I think we might all benefit from writing out an after-mission report." His smile let on as much as his teasing tone, and Natasha took her seat beside Clint, sharing a glance and a private smile.

Tony groaned loudly, competing with the engines as they took off.

-

Tony watched curiously as Clint left the jet in autopilot and retrieved his bow case. When they'd left the base he'd seen the archer open the case to pull out the black box he'd jacked into the Quinjet's console, narrow screen blinking away, visible still from where Tony was sitting; but the other tech hadn't appeared until they'd landed, and he'd been too busy prepping the suit to ask questions.

The black box was obviously connected to the Quinjet's radio in some way - he'd listened to Clint rattle through preflight with ground control in that strangely flat - now that he knew what he was listening for - synthetic voice.

The dorky-looking purple sunglasses had a padded slot in the bow case, and a small box came out of another slot in the foam, a pair of skin-tone hearing aids inside. Clint switched them out for the ones he'd worn for the mission - black, though they otherwise looked identical to Tony's eyes. There must have been something about them that made them more appropriate for missions.

Clint glanced up, still adjusting the fit, and caught Tony's curious staring. "So... you lip-read, right?" Tony asked. "You're deaf enough that voices don't do anything for you."

Clint's lips quirked into a grin and he glanced at the black box blinking away before turning back to Tony. "Something like that," he agreed.

"So how do comms work for you?" he pressed. Steve was glaring, so he figured he was probably being rude, but hey - he was the tech guy, he couldn't *not* know. The curiosity was killing him.

Clint pulled the glasses back out of the case and set it aside, handing them across the bay to Tony and letting him toy with them for a bit before indicating the hidden power switch on one of the arms. "What am I looking at here?" Tony asked, putting the glasses on and not seeing anything other than a purple tint.

"Tasha, switch your comm back on," Clint asked, glancing over his shoulder.

Tony turned and grinned at Steve, entertained to see that he was just as curious, even as Bruce snored away on the seat beside him.

"Comms check," Natasha said quietly, and Tony resisted the urge to jump as a subtle line of text appeared along the bottom edge of the glasses, prefixed with a 'NR:'.

"Oh!" he grinned. "How is that... that's cool. Is it projected?"

"Picking you up on the SHIELD-local sensors, sir," JARVIS said in his ear, and the linked channel scrolled the text across the bottom of the glasses' hidden screen, with a little 'TS:'.

Tony handed the glasses back for Steve to have a look at, and found himself thinking through the technology and how he would make it work. "What happens when too many people talk at once?"

"It just doesn't pick out words."

With independent, isolated audio channels, maybe... "JARVIS - we can do better, right?"

"I'm sure, sir," JARVIS replied obligingly.

"No," Clint gestured for the glasses back from Steve, pushing them into the case and closing it decisively. "No playing with the assistive tech," he said firmly. "It's a rule."

"A 'no improvements' rule?" Stark scoffed, but Clint had already turned back to the Quinjet console.

Steve shook his head and moved up to ask questions about the Quinjet controls, and Tony huffed out a put-upon sigh, fingers itching to get down all the ideas already turning. Bruce leaned in, blinking groggily as Natasha laughed in the face of Steve's enthusiasm. "You've not been around the Tower's labs - big project or have you been out of town?"

Tony snorted, leaning back into his seat and pulling a tablet from the storage space where he'd stashed it on the ride over. "Pepper put her foot down about living in a building full of employees and questionably stable superheroes," he said dismissively, "We're staying in Malibu. The Tower was never meant as a home, you know, more a layover for business."

Tony wasn't sure what Bruce's expression was doing, but he was frowning when he looked up to ask- "Should we be... I mean, Pepper shouldn't have to..." and stumbled to a halt.

"Don't even," Stark interrupted his worrying. "I invited you all to share my space for a reason, mostly that reason being I have a lot. Of space, that is, and I want you there, in New York." He took a breath, forcing a grin. He didn't want to be thinking about New York right now. It had been a good day, a simple day. Memories of New York never led anywhere good. "I've been keeping an eye on your work, you know. Not really my field, biochem is far too... squidgy, but I can appreciate the output." Tony glanced over, away from the micro-hologram system he was sketching out on the pad. "I can also tell it's flowing better now than in the first few weeks."

"It takes time to get used to the equipment..." Bruce replied, his tone almost defensive. He shrugged. "And the fact that we'd just stopped an alien invasion, that was pretty distract..." Bruce hesitated, and Tony would have been wondering what his face was doing, but he was too busy gripping the pad as if it was his only handle on reality, cold sweat pricking on the back of his neck. "Stark?"

"Yeah, Malibu is relaxing," he said, huffing another breath. If he could just keep talking, maybe Bruce wouldn't notice his little breakdown. Ha. "Relaxing is what I've been doing. Lots of... deep breathing and..." He trailed off, looking intently down at his tablet, and was grateful when Bruce let him have his privacy to pull himself back together.

As the jet settled on the runway of the helicarrier, Clint and Natasha busy with the switches and Steve looking curiously over their shoulders, Bruce leaned in to add, "I don't think any of us are handling it particularly well, if that helps."

"Cap and the spy twins don't look too bothered," Stark grumbled, throwing the tablet into the bag he'd arrived with as the others collected their things around him, mostly failing to hide how his hands were shaking.

They let the others lead the way into the facility, falling into step and ignoring the curious stares their multi-coloured little group was drawing. It wasn't unusual for Tony to draw attention, but he couldn't help but notice how badly it was affecting Bruce. "Apparently SHIELD picked up Steve in Nevada with an empty gas tank and heat stroke," he told Tony quietly as they stepped inside, turning his glasses over and over in his hands.

Tony snorted. "I thought he was looking a bit tanned."

"I had second degree burns," Steve admitted blandly as he hesitated outside of a briefing room. Clint and Natasha seemed to have peeled off from the group somewhere along the way. "I may have lost track of time."

"Okay, so... a bit distracted there, Cap." Tony nodded, as if in appreciation, following Steve into the room and slumping into one of the empty seats.

"I don't think Clint's sleeping - he keeps nodding off and jerking awake in the social spaces around the tower, and Natasha has been..." Bruce glanced up as Natasha and Clint ambled back in, back in civilian clothing, taking seats around the briefing room table.

"I've been around," Natasha finished for him, eyes narrowed.

"You've been stalking me around the labs," Bruce corrected. "I haven't worked out why yet."

"Exposure," Clint muttered, and then fell quiet as Hill appeared.

-

"Captain." Steve was called to a halt en-route to his ride to Tony's Tower by Fury's voice. He backtracked to find the Director waiting for him in a deserted corridor.

"Yes, sir?"

Fury led him into an empty briefing room and stood behind the high-backed chair at the head of the table, leaning with intent. "SHIELD has put your team out of reach for a reason, but I don't want you isolated." The Director fell quiet for a beat, before sighing tightly. "I'm fighting to keep the five of you together, but that means I have to make concessions. Stark will have someone on staff - my Agents have been getting away with not talking to anyone about the attack on New York and I'd like you to see that changes. Frankly, I think all of you could benefit from some dialogue."

"Sir?"

"Therapy, Rogers. I think your team needs to be in therapy." Fury's lips twisted into an expression Steve might have described as a sneer, but he didn't know who it was aimed at. "Barton claims he doesn't remember much of Loki's... possession. Selvig says he remembers most of it. I have Psych on my back, telling me Barton's heading for a psychological event when those memories kick in."

"An event?" Steve questioned.

"That would be bad. And it would be something I'd rather happen in the office of a professional than in the field."

"I'd have to agree with you, sir. But Clint hasn't shown any sign of..."

Fury held up one hand, stopping Steve. "I think that's why psych is worried. He was subject to some serious head-fuck, and the most Romanoff can say is he seems subdued." He shrugged. "That could just be a response to losing Coulson. Hell, it could just be he's being shy. Mr. Stark, on the other hand, is definitely headed for a breakdown, and Dr. Banner is a perfect example of why people should be in therapy." Fury raised an eyebrow and Steve tried to resist the urge to laugh. They were a mess, the lot of them, and people kept asking them to show up and save the day? "Dialogue, Rogers. See your team gets some."

"Sir," Steve nodded.

"I'm being called to DC while the helicarrier's grounded for repairs. Maybe being closer to the WSC will give me some leverage to get Dr. Banner some breathing room, and my Agents back in the field. Maybe they want me there for other reasons. Watch their backs, Cap."

"Is there something I need to be watching for, sir?"

Fury scanned the room, as if looking for something, and then turned back to Steve. "Not yet," he said intently. "Just stay sharp."

-

They were back in the Tower, sitting around a table practically groaning under the weight of food, before Bruce had a chance to follow up on Clint's comment.

"Exposure to me, or the other guy?" he asked Natasha, and watched curiously as she shot Clint a sharp glare. "Because you know it's going to take something big to get him out in the open again."

"Clint was finishing a conversation from before we walked in, not talking to you," she said flatly.

"No," Bruce said gently, in a chiding tone. "Please explain."

"Natasha doesn't like things that scare her," Clint answered, dodging a flying morsel of food as Natasha tried to quiet him from the other side of the table. "She's learning to be not afraid."

"I don't like reactions I can't control," Natasha said flatly.

"Bruce, Natasha is having an uncontrollable reaction to you!" Stark chuckled.

"Shut up, Stark," Steve sighed, starting to gather up empty plates and serving dishes.

"I nearly killed you all, Stark." Bruce pointed out, his gaze fixed on the glasses he was cleaning on the corner of his shirt. "I think chances are Agent Romanoff's not having a good reaction."

Clint's amused expression fell flat and he took the stack of tableware from Steve, escaping towards the kitchen. Natasha watched him go before turning back to the table. "It's not... I don't like feeling out of control of *my* reactions." Her lips thinned. "So I'm training it out, Bruce. It won't be a problem. And it's Natasha."

"Well then, Natasha." He paused with a smile. "Do you think we could maybe move up from stalking to spending time in each other's space with both of us knowing about it?" Bruce looked up to meet her eyes. "It'd help my blood pressure."

Natasha stared for a minute before nodding. "I can do that."


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to my hardworking betas - neyronrose and kiragecko. This has suffered from some fiddling since they saw it, any and all mistakes continue to be my own.
> 
> Long note on speech cueing:  
> While not affected by it, I am aware of the contentious nature of speech cueing in the Deaf community. I would like to clarify that this Clint has sadly limited involvement in Deaf Culture, and has been raised and educated solely by hearing individuals. Barbera is an academic and has used methods that she has come across in an academic setting to educate Clint. Her priority has never been to integrate him into Deaf Culture (debatably, at least at first, her focus was pure academic curiosity - this does not necessarily make her a good person, nor one acting in Clint's best interests).  
> While ASL will always be his first language and primary method of communication, cueing is a tool he has used (and continues to use) to aid understanding of spoken language and to assist in reproducing unfamiliar words verbally. Natasha and Clint would, of course, much rather the Avengers took the time to learn ASL, but Natasha is wary of abandoning Clint at this point in his emotional recovery when the only signer in the building is JARVIS and lipreading is notoriously arduous. I hope that makes sense, and that no offence is caused. Please feel free to improve on my understanding if you feel I've misrepresented something.

It was Tony who found Steve the following morning with a duffel bag at his feet and his phone in hand.

"Going somewhere, Cap?" he asked, resisting the urge to rub at his eyes. The tower's security was better than anywhere else in the world, but that hadn't helped him sleep any easier. Not when he was surrounded by memories that shook him to the core. It was a cheap way out, blaming Pepper for the move back to Malibu - he'd needed to not be in New York, Pepper had just been sharp enough to see that and tell him they were moving back home.

Steve looked up from his phone, scowling. Tony didn't take it personally. Much. "Director Fury has asked me to take a domestic flight to DC and get set up there to await further orders," Steve said, scowl fading. "That sound ominous to you?"

"Considering Fury only left last night..." Tony didn't want to think too hard on what that might mean.

"I know he was trying to keep us together in one place. I guess that's not an option anymore."

"Well, I'm in Malibu from tonight, and Thor's about as far away as a team member could conceivably get... Maybe he's just accepted the inevitable?"

"Maybe." Steve scowled back down at his phone and then dropped it onto the top of his duffel. "Look, Fury asked me to set up some... therapy sessions, for the team. Said you'd have someone on staff?"

"Head-shrinking, Steve?" Tony asked, bemused. "You really think that's going to stick, with this team?"

"It couldn't hurt? He's worried about his operatives..."

"Of course he is," Tony broke in.

"And Bruce has already pointed out that none of us are finding coping easy," Steve pressed. "If we're going to make this work, we need to be at our best."

"I can tell you who we have on retainer. Not for me, you understand, but some of the things Stark Industries does..."

Steve let him trail off, waiting. After a beat his expression softened, making something in Tony's stomach turn. "You have anyone to talk to?" he asked. "If I can't talk you into seeing your own company's therapist?"

"Pepper," he snapped out, feeling a sudden urge to run for the door. He should have picked up a tablet, or a coffee cup, or anything he could hide behind. It served him right, walking around his tower empty handed. "I have Pepper, I nominate her as my therapist."

Steve's shoulders slumped, and he nodded. "That will have to be good enough 'til I can find someone you'll agree to see professionally."

"You do love a challenge, Capsicle." He was already half way down the hall. "Hey, JARVIS?"

"Yes, sir," JARVIS came back immediately. Maybe JARVIS could listen to his worries. He could program him to say all the right things, if he just knew what those were.

"Set Steve up with a flight to DC before he busts a vein trying to do it on his phone."

"Of course, sir. Business class?"

He hesitated in the doorway to the lounge, catching a glimpse of the tile floor that had once cradled a fallen God, and made a turn toward the workshop. Screw waiting for his jet to be ready, he'd fly the suit home. He needed to be out of this place. "Go all out."

-

This was a safe place for Bruce (breathe), warm wood on the walls, no windows (breathe), soft matting on the floor - maybe it had been designed for fighting (breathe) but it was ideal for this. For sinking into his (breathe) body, for appreciating both halves of him.

Meditation was far from perfect at subduing his other guy, but as he slipped into an easy breathing rhythm everything seemed to settle in his skin.

"Hey."

"Clint," Bruce kept his eyes shut and his posture relaxed. There was a vague noise that Bruce attributed to Clint taking off his shoes and stepping onto the mat as it shifted minutely in front of him.

"Can I ask a question?" Clint asked, voice high above his head. There was a rustling of clothes and Clint's next breath out came from a seated position in front of him.

"Of course," Bruce agreed, not letting his eyes open to check Clint's posture. His breathing was quiet and shallow, the way it was when he was trying to be unobtrusive, and the silence dragged a little when he didn't immediately continue.

Bruce let himself settle again. If Clint needed something, he'd ask.

In the end the question came after a long enough pause that Bruce had sunk far down in his own head, forgetting he was even sharing space with another person. "Do I say your name wrong?" Clint's breathing hitched and then deepened at the end of the question, as if asking alone had released a weight of tension.

Bruce bit back his 'what?' and gave the question some thought. "I've only ever heard you use my surname. Why do you ask?"

"I'd only seen it written, I didn't get a chance to ask. I hate getting names wrong." Bruce thought back to their first meeting, aching and tired post-battle but somehow still easy and companionable.

"Is that why you call Steve 'Cap'?"

"Uh... no. Maybe." Clint fell quiet for a long moment. "He was Cap when we talked before... with Phil."

Bruce opened his eyes and found Clint mirroring his position in Sukhasana, his hands stacked loosely in his lap. His back was straight, but he still looked exhausted. From what he'd seen, the whole team was aching for some good sleep.

"Banner is fine, but you could call me Bruce if you like." Bruce lifted his hands to spell clumsily through his name, and Clint's happy-surprised 'Ha!' made it worth the couple of hours he'd spent with JARVIS learning the ASL alphabet.

"Bruce?" Clint asked, his hand making shapes briefly across his throat in a sign that Bruce didn't understand, and making his name sound like 'bruise' but still more recognisable than any of the varied things Tony liked to call him.

Bruce smiled. "Like that," he nodded.

"Is it good?"

"You could go heavier on the R," Bruce shrugged, twisting his fingers around the letter. "And a little more S than Z," he had to think a moment to remember Z - he hadn't prioritised it in practice. Clint frowned and offered a C back, perhaps thinking Bruce was getting confused. Bruce shook his head and smiled. "I'm not explaining very well."

"More S," Clint hissed. "So Bruce?" It was more his name, and Bruce grinned and nodded, chuckling as Clint repeated "Bruce, Bruce, Bruce," until it started to degenerate into consonants.

"It's fine," he interrupted, catching hold of Clint's forearm. "It's good."

"Thanks, Bruce," Clint grinned, and then scrambled up and headed for the main door, catching up his trainers from the edge of the mat on the way. Natasha appeared in the doorway from the other part of the gym before he was all the way out of the door and he called "Bye, Tasha!" before disappearing.

Natasha's eyes narrowed and she folded into child pose next to Bruce on the mats. Bruce took a slow breath and closed his eyes, trying to settle. "You'll regret that later," Natasha said calmly into her knees.

Bruce resisted the urge to open his eyes again, but curiosity made his brow furrow. "Why do you say that?" he asked quietly.

He had to wait for a response as Natasha moved precisely into another pose, only the sound of cloth moving. "Clint goes through phases of needing to check his pronunciation on every word," she answered eventually. "It's a nervous thing, he knows he speaks well enough. I stopped letting him ask."

"That seems harsh - it can't be easy coming into an environment with new people..." Bruce was tensing up, he could feel it and he tried to let himself settle again. "You use two different types of sign. I recognise ASL, what's the other?"

"You mean speech cueing?" Natasha asked, shifting pose again. "It's an aid to lip-reading. Separates out all the different sounds into hand positions around the mouth." She must have taken a more strenuous pose, he could hear it in her choppy breath. "If we're going to be spending a lot of time together it's fast to learn." There was a deep sigh and Natasha relaxed. "If you don't have time for ASL it would be... useful. To make things easier for Clint."

"Will you and Clint teach me?" he asked.

Natasha fell quiet, but Bruce couldn't hear her move this time. "I've been called to the DC SHIELD office," she said eventually. "It sounds like I'll be working with Steve."

Bruce thought briefly of Fury's insistence that he was trying to keep the team together, to keep them in a position to support one another, when they'd first met after New York. "That doesn't bode well. Are you concerned?"

Another pause. "I think Fury's just setting up pieces for a bigger play. It could be months before anything happens. I wanted to..." Bruce did open his eyes as Natasha hesitated, glancing away as he made eye contact. "Stark put Clint in contact with a shrink. Cap's idea, I think. Will you check he's going to his sessions?" She lifted her chin, as if it didn't matter either way - curiously defiant.

"I'll do my best?" he offered. "I don't often see him around the Tower."

Natasha nodded and sank back into the mats.

-

"Guess it's just you and me," Clint greeted Bruce the following morning when he emerged from the Tower's gym. His grin disappeared a moment later when a screen loaded with JARVIS' new signing avatar. "Agent Barton, you have a message from Agent Hand."

Bruce looked up from the mug in his hand and gave a shrug. "Travel safe."


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The largest apologies for anyone who has been waiting for this, or who has been witness to my little breakdown over it. The largest of thanks to Neyronrose and Kiragecko, who once again have helped me wrestle this fic and my own brain into submission. I'm sorry for any stress I've piled on your shoulders. Any issues or mistakes continue to be my own.

Finally hitting the 'analyse' button on the program that he'd spent most of the last week compiling data for, Bruce sat back in his chair, feeling his back creak and his eyes swim slightly at the change of focal length. He dropped his glasses onto the desk to rub at his eyes, and then stretched upwards in the ergonomic monstrosity Tony had declared the 'best chair ever' over the video call while spinning on the wheeled stool he used in his own lab.

He forced himself out of his seat and across to the window. He needed to stretch his eyes as much as the rest of him, from hours staring at a computer screen. He settled his weight against the glass and studied the recovering landscape around the tower. The private lab space Tony had assigned to him (a gross waste of resources, but he couldn't blame the man for not wanting any of his company or staff in the same space) was a couple of floors higher than the company space, and had much better views as it just topped out most of the nearest skyscrapers. The social floors and private accommodation was all on the top few floors, and so had the best views, but given Tony's flair for the dramatic, that didn't surprise him.

There were a few larger instruments in the basement levels - protected from the vibrations implicit in any building of this side in such a large city. It had taken the research team a month to trial methods to shield them from the odd and shifting magnetic field produced by the arc reactor that shared the basement space. It had been the first time in many years that Bruce had been involved in a multidisciplinary study like that, something not focused on the Hulk or his situation, and he’d been inexplicably pleased to see the work completed.

He dragged his attention back to the city laid out at his feet. At this height the surroundings were boring and vague, the people too small to make out properly, moving with no obvious purpose or care. He was lonely. Time to top up on coffee and make a run at one of his other projects while this one took up a generous proportion of the Tower's processing power. Maybe he’d pull up a project that required him to use one of the shared instruments so that he would have an excuse to go downstairs and share space with some other scientists for a while. They weren't always good for conversation, especially if they were involved in their own work and taking advantage of the brief time-slots available on the more in-demand instruments, but they'd let him feel like he was socialising.

"Dr. Banner, if I may?"

JARVIS was usually a welcome interruption, but right now his voice made Bruce's attention snap to the display on his screen, looking for the impending error in his programming.

"Your program appears to be running well," he was reassured. "Time to completion is estimated at six hours and twenty three minutes. Might I suggest you adjourn to the social kitchen? Agent Barton is preparing food, and has enquired as to whether you wished to join him."

"He's back from his mission?" Bruce asked, turning off the holographic monitor with a gesture. The arc reactor might be as green as green could be for an energy source (provided it held to current data), but old habits died hard even when your monitor seemed like science fiction.

"He arrived at the tower six hours ago. He confirmed that his mission was successful, despite his injuries."

With a shot of adrenaline, Bruce was moving for the lab’s exit, only taking the time to pick up his abandoned glasses and drop his labcoat on the hook on the back of the door. His bag was perched on the table, just outside the lab's clean area and he dropped the day's pendrive of backup data into one of its pockets, pulling it onto his shoulder as he headed for the elevator.

"Why didn't you tell me he was hurt when he arrived?" he demanded as the elevator doors slid open.

"He insisted that his injuries had been tended at the New York field base upon landing, and that you should not be disturbed while you were intent on your work."

The elevator door was soon opening onto the social floor. Despite JARVIS' reassurances, part of Bruce was still imagining the Agent sprawled against one wall in the way they'd first met, skin bloody and knocked unconscious.

He wasn't expecting to find him standing at the kitchen counter, deep in conversation with JARVIS' avatar, surrounded by vegetables and pans. JARVIS gestured over Clint’s shoulder as Bruce took the time to drop his bag under the nearest table, and Clint glanced back to offer Bruce a vague wave before returning to his conversation.

He was bruised across the top of his jaw, with a blooming black eye, but otherwise didn't look hurt. Bruce narrowed his eyes at JARVIS' avatar in accusation, realising he'd been lured out of his lab. The glare wouldn't have quite the same effect as it would to another person, but it would make him feel better at the blatant manipulation.

The avatar JARVIS had chosen - without any input with Tony, or so they both insisted - was a thin-faced blond man, far from the photograph of Edwin Jarvis Bruce had found online, when his Blade Runner-esque curiosity had led him to look. The image had initially been quite flat, but after a few days of signing with Clint had picked up enough expressions to make speaking with him quite engaging.

"I'm making food," Clint said out loud as he turned, indicating the food on the worktop a little superfluously. "What do you eat? JARVIS says no meat."

"Yes, I'm vegetarian. But I'll eat pretty much anything else."

Bruce reconsidered Clint's intonation. Had that been doubt at the validity of any meal without meat? He wouldn't be the first, and certainly wouldn't be rare amongst military-types. "Or I can make my own if you'd rather use meat."

"I've got tofu, some beans, lentils." Clint opened a cupboard and gestured at the packed contents, with a roll of his eyes. "We'll find something."

Bruce settled onto the stool at the kitchen island as Clint turned back to chopping vegetables, soaking in the novelty of being cooked for. It hadn't happened in a while. A lot of people had offered, especially out in the poorer communities he'd favoured in the last few years; families who would have spent a month's budget on one night's food to thank him for medical supplies and the barest of expertise; things that should have been available to them, that were available to him for pocket change. He made sure to always have an excuse ready, reluctant to stay longer than needed in people's homes. He always had another house to visit, a non-existent guest of his own to tend for. This was a strange treat, being offered food with no sense of guilt behind it.

"How was your mission?" Bruce asked, and then asked again when Clint turned back from his search for a frying pan, internally rolling his eyes at himself. "A month seems a long time for..." He bit short the word 'assassination', the word bitter on his tongue. That was Clint's job he was commenting on, and as distasteful as it was to him, he could understand the need for it. Not to mention his skillset had saved lives in New York.

Fortunately Clint had seen his self-interruption and took over. "It was three missions," he explained, loading the vegetables into the pan with more oil than Bruce would have used. "No time to come back."

That sounded particularly hellish, but Clint seemed unfazed. Maybe that was normal for an international assassin. "So you're back now... because you were hurt?"

Clint scowled at him, and hitched up the bottom of his shirt roughly to show a thick layer of bandages around his midsection. "You want to check? JARVIS pulled my medical file, he could show you." His words were short and choppy, and Bruce wondered what line he'd crossed. Whether it was the invasion of his privacy, Bruce playing doctor or simply misplaced frustration that he was injured at all.

"I'd rather you told me," Bruce said, keeping his words light and hoping it translated onto his face. "But I really don't need to know if you don't want to talk about it."

Clint turned to the stove with the pan, and let it clatter down onto the ceramic surface. He cooked angrily, as if the food had angered him personally, but he set a place at the little kitchen table for Bruce, who'd been planning on slinking away with his plate until he could work out exactly what he'd done.

Clint placed the crockery down with more care than he'd shown the pots and pans that had been thrown at the sink, and slumped into his seat, flinching and straightening almost as soon as he'd landed. Bruce narrowed his eyes, but didn't press, taking the second seat and signing a thank you that Clint didn't even glance at. The food looked good - heavy and nutritious and exactly what Bruce would hope to see someone eating after a long period of physical exertion ending in an injury. The beans weren't fried, which was a point in the meal's favour, and their protein would make up for the missing meat. He was quietly impressed.

It was obvious that while he'd been invited to stay and the offer of food hadn't been rescinded, Clint wasn't going to give Bruce any of his attention, gazing out of the window over the New York skyline, so Bruce didn't feel rude pulling out his tablet and paging through a couple of thicker academic reviews while he ate. He murmured a thank you as JARVIS added a progress bar on the program that was still running downstairs in the corner of his screen. The freedom to chose his own research meant that he could pick and choose which papers he read, rather than having to scour every inch of the published field, and so he was engrossed in brilliant science and even better writing when he lost track of gravity and the forkful of vegetables and sauce that had been forgotten on its way to his mouth splatted back down onto his plate.

Clint snorted a laugh, reminding Bruce he wasn't eating alone, and he looked up. "Feeling better?"

"Sorry," Clint shrugged, his eyes sliding away for a beat before coming back to Bruce's expectant expression. "I've got to be ten times better than any other Agent to be good enough for SHIELD. After Loki..." he trailed off, looking away again. "Getting hurt doesn't help, should have seen the shooter."

Bruce waited for Clint to turn back before asking, "Should have... right in front of you, or should have in the 'if I had eyes in the back of my head' sense?"

Clint gestured and Bruce wasn't sure if he was indicating where the shooter had been or signing something. He shrugged. "I'm just... tired."

"You're still not sleeping?" Bruce's eyes narrowed.

"Had some time with local shrinks on downtime, my first session with Stark's guy tomorrow. They're talking about pills for my sleeping."

Bruce wasn't overly surprised. Talk therapy wasn't going to do much on its own if Clint wasn't sleeping enough for his body or mind to recover from each day. "That's not a bad thing," he offered. "It can help a lot, and once you're sleeping you come back off them slowly. It's to support your recovery, not replace it."

Clint nodded vaguely, already visibly lagging. After a month of pretty much non-stop work, a good meal and hopefully some painkillers, Bruce hoped he was tired enough to help him out for tonight at least.

"What type of doctor are you, Bruce?"

"Oh, no,” Bruce shook his head apologetically. He didn’t want his advice to be taken professionally. “My experience of psychology is from the same side of the couch. I have a working knowledge of basic immunology and human biology, but my field is physics. Specifically medical radiophysics. Radiation and how it affects the body."

"Like the Canadian guys?" Clint gestured to indicate someone very tall.

Bruce chuckled. "I wouldn't call that a normal reaction, but there was definitely a gamma radiation source involved in making them... bigger. I've been working remotely with some of SHIELD's scientists on the machine they found at the epicentre of the original gamma signal. Whoever made it had tried to destroy it before SHIELD arrived, but they managed to retrieve a lot of the parts."

Clint's eyes narrowed. "You worked with Bobbi Morse?"

Bruce noted Clint's hesitation on the name and thought back to Natasha, telling him that the uncertainty was a nervous tick. Clint spoke so confidently on everything else, it seemed like there was a story there. Especially given that he'd never heard him hesitate on 'Natasha' or any of her nicknames, and the hard 'T' and the sharp 'sh' were some of Clint's weakest phonemes in the rest of his speech.

"I don't think so," Bruce mused, thinking through the contact he'd had with the SHIELD team and realising he'd completely failed to pick up more than a few surnames. His subconscious hermit techniques strike again. "What's his field?"

"Biochem? She's amazing, level six field agent and still does lab time between missions." Clint looked enthused in a way Bruce wasn't sure he'd seen on him before, but his expression shuttered quickly, as he added, "I'm not sure where she's based now, we haven't spoken in a while."

"A friend of yours?" Bruce asked.

"Ex-wife," Clint returned with a grimace. "Screwing up relationships is my superpower."

"Speaking as someone who's had one serious relationship that ended in a military strike led by her father, I can sympathise," Bruce said, the words slipping out easily when he wasn't thinking about what he was saying.

"Military...?" Clint questioned.

"Tanks, helicopters, experimental weaponry..." Bruce offered, feeling the tension start to grab at the back of his throat.

"Oh," Clint replied, slightly wide-eyed.

Gathering the plates to distance himself from the sting of the memory, with the delayed reaction to his own easy words leaving him shaky and buzzed, Bruce moved to the sink. Talking about these things was supposed to help, he reminded himself. Thankfully, Clint stayed quiet.

-

Clint was running, and his chest hurt. Awareness came to him in stages, flashes of faces and the bandaged wound in his side burning.

He was running, and stopping was not an option, even as he felt the tiniest of fleshy pops and a surge of new pain in his side.

If he stopped... if he stopped... God, he didn't even remember, but he couldn't. His legs were shaking and the faces he could see resolved into accusing frowns as he ran between them, and he *hurt*, but he couldn't stop.

There had been ice blue eyes, he remembered now with a shot of fresh adrenaline, a guy in a car at the intersection as he ran past. He'd been jogging, gentle exercise as per instructions. Those eyes had looked straight at him and he just...

Clint flung himself around a corner and hauled himself to a stop, crouching in the cover the wall provided even though he was starting to think no one was chasing him. Least of all Loki. His legs were shaking and the pain in his side was hot and sharp. The guy in the car had dark hair, long enough to fall beside his face, but he'd been tanned and driving a blue Corolla. Not Loki. It hadn't been Loki.

Clint put his head in his hands and half slumped into the support of the wall, still dragging his breathing back under control. He wanted to press his hands to the bandage around his middle, but he wouldn't telegraph his injury that obviously. It hadn't even *looked* like Loki, not really, and he'd just... he'd flipped out.

The rush of fear in the wake of the subsiding adrenaline had him shaking and cold; was this him losing his mind? He'd seen the worried looks from Natasha and from Hill and Fury. Even the team of intelligence agents he'd been escorting the last month had looked at him like they were expecting him to crack. Now he was proving them all right.

He needed to get somewhere safe, somewhere he could be watched. It was one thing to run from some imagined threat, but if he'd decided to fight instead...

He scanned the nearest intersection, searching for some clue as to how far he'd run, where he'd ended up. The houses around him were expensive and well cared for. No wonder people kept looking at him like they were thinking of phoning the police. He stood carefully and started back towards the Tower.

They'd called to shift him to another office after he'd spoken to the group Stark had recommended, his new appointment one closer to the Tower. Something about a more appropriate therapist for his individual needs, and he had a vague hope that the new guy would know ASL. The receptionist had been so thrown by the VRS system - nothing more complicated than an interpreter relay with a video call on Clint's end, so that Clint could sign and have his words voiced for the other caller - that she'd barely managed to remember when and where the new appointment was. He'd made a point of reminding her more than once that he would need an interpreter if the therapist didn't know ASL, and that they would both need clearance.

He honestly hadn't thought he needed the sessions - he didn't remember what had happened while he was with Loki, and it didn't bother him one bit that he didn't remember what was potentially the most horrific period of his career so far. He knew Dr. Selvig remembered everything, but that didn't mean Clint was courting breakdown by not chasing his own memories. He didn't *want* to remember. He killed friends, he nearly took down a helicarrier over a populated area, and he nearly let an evil god take over the fucking planet. Why would he want to remember that?

Still, after today, walking home with shaking knees and at least one popped stitch in his side, it was hard to deny he needed something.

-

Unfortunately, the first meeting didn't have the most auspicious beginnings.

The receptionist scowled at him when he gave his name, and offered him a drink as if it physically pained her to do so. She brought him tea instead of the coffee he asked for and ignored him when he tried to get her to change it. Clint had a brief moment wondering if she was hearing impaired - he was still holding out hope for an ASL fluent therapist - but she picked up the phone when it rang and had a short conversation which Clint made himself look away from.

"We haven't managed to arrange for an interpreter yet," Dr. Sandridge said as the receptionist ushered him through the door minutes later with his drink still in hand. The greying doctor looked entirely unapologetic at the admission. "Short notice to find someone with an appropriate clearance level, you understand. Should we reschedule?"

Clint stood in the doorway for a moment, the taste of tea that he didn't want still bitter on the back of his throat, looking at the long couch and the stiff looking high-backed leather chair. All the clichés in this place. The temptation to just go back to the Tower almost won out, but the morning's break with reality was too worrying to ignore. "If I go now I won't come back," he admitted. "There's someone coming later?" The doctor nodded and started saying something as he turned his back, gesturing vaguely at the couch. Not a great start, but he'd convinced himself he needed this, so he took the couch. "Sorry, I missed that," he said, sensing it would be the first of many.

Sandridge gave him a blank look, and Clint was going to lose his cool really fast if this kept up. "Let's start with what happened, and we'll go from there?"

Some part of him had been looking forward to having a signed conversation about this. Not having to think through the words and just express everything that was going through his head right now. He'd had a mockery of a debrief over a video call from Stark's Tower before Fury and Hill had explained that he couldn't come back to SHIELD premises while they got things sorted out with the WSC. Natasha had been reluctant to talk about what had happened every time he started on the topic, and he was pretty short of other people to sign with who had the clearance to know.

This, though, this was painful, as he found himself asking Sandridge to repeat himself over and over until he stopped looking down at his notes and stopped trying to make his questions sound pretty. Verbalising the experiences of the last few months left him cold and shaky. Even trying to outline the sheer amount of action he simply couldn't remember left his stomach in knots, and he knew his ability to put together a sentence was falling apart as Sandridge started asking him to repeat himself and stopped making his little scribbling notes.

It was a huge relief as the hour disappeared and Sandridge stopped asking questions and started making statements. "I'd like to get a sleep monitor on you. Something to log your sleep cycles." He turned to the desk that was in the corner of the room, and pulled a box out of a drawer. Inside, when he offered it to Clint, was something that looked like a wristwatch but with no face on it. "Wear it all the time, day and night, and it'll track any power naps as well as full sleep. It will give us something to work on when I see you again. Thursday, is it?"

Clint nodded without trying to remember if that was right or not. "You'll have an interpreter then?" he pressed.

"We'll try our best to find someone suitable," Sandridge replied. “Try to rest, Clint. I’m going to contact your superiors and recommend that you be taken off duty for the time being.” Clint flinched. He’d expected the leave, but that didn’t make it any easier to accept. “Low adrenaline environments, no screen work before bed. Optimise your sleeping conditions. I’ll see you in a few days time, and we’ll talk about medication if you still can’t rest.”

Convincing his exhausted body to support him, Clint stood and left, handing his empty plastic cup back to the receptionist as he passed.

-

The airport waiting hall was packed with people and hot, the overworked air conditioning barely touching the big open space. Steve had disappeared off somewhere to find food, dressed to fit in but still standing out. She'd eventually convinced him to cut his hair, and she was slowly talking him around to blending in with his age group using appropriate clothing choices; at least when she made it a mission. Even still, there was something about him that was hard for people to ignore.

Training a World War Two supersoldier to be a twenty first century SHIELD superspy had been good fun. That was at least in part due to the fact that Steve seemed to be a sincerely nice guy, and was remarkably easy to spend time with.

She shared an awkward 'strangers commiserating' glance with the guy that took the seat next to her, fanning himself with his magazine. The woman on the cover was more appropriately dressed for the temperature in the hall, but he didn't seem to mind showing off his reading material as his glance turned into a leer.

Natasha pulled out her tablet and set it up on her knees. She hacked into the airport's wireless with a few swipes, encrypted with some SHIELD-brand software, and dialled Clint.

She firmly masked her surprise at the look of sheer exhaustion on his face as it resolved on her screen. She'd heard he'd been in the field, and that usually levelled the both of them out better than anything. She'd expected to see him looking better, not worse. But then mind-controlling aliens in New York hadn't exactly been the usual kind of nightmare mission to have to level out from.

"You look like shit," she signed flatly, pleased to see his lips twitch into a smile.

"Miss you," he replied, fluttering his eyes like they were long separated lovers.

"Lucky you, we've got a two night layover in New York. Cap's getting recerted on all the hardware at the New York range. Fury has me training him for stealth and infiltration. It's funny watching him try to be..." She smiled to herself, searching for a way to describe Steve's intrinsic showmanship. "Not Cap," she finished.

"You got a new partner, Natasha?" he asked with a teasing expression. She had worried about this conversation, but STRIKE Delta hadn't been together as a unit since Agent Garrett had taken over the STRIKE department, and Clint was grinning like he was proud of her, or of them both.

"I heard you'd been benched," she said while she worked out what she was feeling about his immediate approval.

"Stupid mistake," Clint grimaced, his mood souring immediately. "But they're using it as an excuse to ground me until I'm sleeping." He gestured to what Natasha had assumed to be a watch on his wrist.

"Hey," the guy next to her said. "I'm sharing this bench with a deaf girl who's hot as shit!" He was on his phone, and she resisted the urge to look his way as Clint detailed his nightmare therapy session. "Duh, she's on the phone to her boyfriend. Think she'll blow me in the bathrooms if I show her the stuff we learned in ASL 101?"

Clint had noticed her distraction and was asking what was wrong. She shook her head and said something rude about the heavy handed therapist. Clint smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes and Natasha was back to being worried. "We land at four. Will you meet us?"

"I have an appointment at five. I'll pick you up, but I'll have to go straight out after." The guy next to her was discussing some porn he'd seen, and the nearest group of people kept shooting the two of them worried looks. A family a few rows over had already moved out of earshot with their small kids, and Natasha didn't blame them. Here came the fun, though. Steve was stepping carefully through the crowd, head and shoulders above most of the rest. She said a quick goodbye to Clint and hung up, leaving the tablet on her knees.

"Hey, Steve," she called, carefully modulating her accent and making herself a touch too loud. "Over here!" Clint was rarely louder than he needed to be; generally in a crowded place he was quiet, but it was an easy misconception to play up to. It was as much a challenge for Steve as for the asshole sitting next to her. He had to be comfortable with a cover changing on the fly, and on changing his own behaviour to suit.

He signed a hello, and a 'you okay?' on his way over, and Natasha heard the stranger choke a little. "Fuck, man," he hissed into his phone. "There's another guy here, maybe it was her brother on the phone, I don't know, but this guy is fucking huge." Natasha would have to tell Clint he got downgraded to brother the minute someone saw Steve. He'd hate that. "Well I don't know, do I? She spoke at him, so..." He trailed off. "Shit, you're right."

Steve was doing a good job of not letting his confusion show openly, but the tentative way he moved to stand in front of her, waiting for more clues, gave him away. The guy had thrown his phone into his bag and was giving his magazine a lot more of his attention than it deserved. Steve had given it a disgusted glance as he approached, but now his attention was on her. "You talk to Clint?" he asked, indicating the tablet. His words were only a touch slowed, but clearly enunciated, and she found herself appreciating how easy he was to lipread. She wondered if Clint had ever remarked on it, if they'd shared space for long enough to even have that conversation.

"Yes," she agreed. "He's not badly hurt, just a gunshot wound." Steve's eyes narrowed. He had obviously not heard about Clint's misadventure. "He'll be back on duty soon."

Steve was still trying to track her play, but he must have noted the eavesdropper going pale. He dropped into the empty seat between them. "Do you think he'll still be happy for us to train with his collection this weekend?" he asked, pointedly turning so he was facing her, giving the other guy his expansive back. "It's been ages since I shot some of the bigger ordinance."

He was trying a line, running with what she'd given him, and Natasha approved. "He's got all the best toys," she agreed.

The PA chimed overhead and the guy leapt up with a muttered "my gate!" before the announcer had even started speaking. Steve gave him a dismissive glance and turned back to Natasha. He leaned forwards in a mimicry of affection. She was so proud of him. "Want to tell me what's going on?" he whispered into her ear.

She pulled back far enough to see his face. "I need to see your lips, Steve," she admonished.

A man on the seats across from them who'd been subtly watching with amusement scowled into his book, and muttered "Get a clue, Steve," at the limits of Natasha's hearing.

"Sorry," Steve signed in reply. "Stupid of me." He was giving her puppy dog eyes, and she raised an eyebrow. "We're signing for the flight?" He was still signing, and Natasha approved. His vocabulary wasn't very big yet, but he seemed to pick up languages with remarkable ease. They'd spent no more than three bored evenings discussing sign, and he was already making sentences with the words he had.

"You'd do that for me?" she asked out loud, pressing her hands together and plastering her face with adoration.

Steve rolled his eyes at her and shifted back into his seat. "Wake me for the flight."


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait...
> 
> Huge thanks to kiragecko, whose infinite patience is proved every time I thrust a chapter into their inbox and run away. This is rambly; full of dialogue, team feels and Bruce's vitriol... Hey, enjoy?

Steve made himself relax in the face of a hall rammed full of tired impatient people in one seemingly endless line. He could see the passport booths at the far end, and the line was moving, but the trapped feeling still grabbed at his lungs.

He wasn't going to let it show, not with Natasha glancing his way with that challenging expression that seemed to suggest she knew everything you were trying to hide. As it was, he always felt a couple of steps behind her.

Even now she was in the character she had assumed as they'd left DC - his Deaf girlfriend, smiley and physically affectionate in a way Steve had never seen her before - and he hadn't worked out what her play was. Whether she was just trying to challenge him to keep up with a changing scenario, testing him in some way, or whether she'd wanted something else. He'd spent the flight quizzing her character for sign language vocabulary and she seemed to approve, so maybe that had been her purpose, allowing him to develop to a conversational level. He wondered if it was a common cover, whether she and Clint had travelled together as a Deaf couple, with him seeing everything and her overhearing everything that was being said around them.

Natasha turned in the line, her rucksack swinging and barely missing the guy in front of her. He turned and glared at her, and Steve signed a 'sorry' over her shoulder, gaining him a bemused look. Steve knew the feeling - who knew why Natasha did anything? They'd been together the whole flight and every minute since, but he couldn't help but think this guy he didn't recognise had done something to offend her and Steve hadn't been paying enough attention.

Natasha asked a question, but beyond knowing it was aimed at him, Steve couldn't identify any of the signs. He signed back 'sorry' and 'again?' because it was easier than explaining, and he knew from experience that the best way to learn a new language was to use it and nothing else.

He didn't know what he was expecting, but Peggy's name in slow fingerspelling wasn't it. "You saw her," Natasha added out loud, "In DC."

"I did," he nodded, knowing he didn't have the fluency in sign for this. "She's in supported living in Washington. It's very good, very bright, very clean. They're taking good care of her."

"Did it help?"

He chuckled shortly, shaking his head. "Not even slightly."

Natasha fell quiet for a moment, stepping forwards as the line moved. She turned to face him again, this time actually catching the guy with her bag. "Did you love her?" she asked, distracting Steve from the other traveller's glare.

He had to take a breath before he answered, even though the reply wasn't something he needed to think about. "She was my one."

"That's very sad," she replied flatly, and Steve wondered if the tone was affectation to go with the role or whether she didn't know how to express sympathy. They'd spent a lot of time together over the last few months, training and socially, and he'd stumbled over their differences in emotional range more than once.

The unexpected conversation distracted him until he made it into the passport booth and out the other side. Their bags were already on the carousel after the long queue, and Steve pulled Natasha's carryall off before it had a chance to go around again. She caught up with him a beat later, a self-satisfied grin on her face.

Steve glanced back down the hallway behind her and found the guy they'd queued with, pressed against the wall, his face bright red.

He wasn't going to ask. He didn't want to know.

-

It was with the clawing fatigue of too many flights in too few days that Natasha resisted the urge towards violence. She'd left Steve behind at the Tower, haring across the city because she'd had a text from Clint asking for help. It didn't matter how tired she was, if Clint asked for help she'd drop everything. She knew he'd do the same for her.

The receptionist was glaring at her like Natasha was intruding on her territory, hackles raised and almost hissing.

"Clint Barton?" Natasha asked a second time. "Please," she added, willing the woman into action.

"He's in with the doctor," the receptionist replied finally, her eyes narrowing.

"I know. I'm the interpreter." There weren't that many doors past the desk, Natasha was sure she didn't *need* this woman's permission to seek out the right room.

"We didn't get an interpreter."

Natasha resisted the urge to ask if they'd even tried, or if they were just trying to save money. This place didn't look like they were hurting for cash, but she'd seen bigger organisations try to refute their responsibility. "That's why he called me."

The receptionist narrowed her eyes and looked around the empty waiting room as if looking for someone to help her out. "I'll call through," she agreed grudgingly, "But if the doctor says no, you'll have to leave."

"He won't say no," Natasha said as the receptionist picked up the phone.

Clint looked dazed as she was shown in to the office. He was standing behind the couch, hands gripping the back, and she wasn't sure if it was for support or to keep him from running. "That's it," he insisted, his eyes taking in every part of the room and not holding on the doctor long enough to be picking up anything he had to say. He spotted Natasha as she stepped into the room, and she had a beat to take in how wretched he looked before he continued, "That's all I remember. I don't *know* anything else."

She'd known this was going to be hard - she'd been through this process herself more than once, enough times to know that if it was easy someone wasn't being honest. She'd never seen Clint this strung out, though.

"Nat, tell him," he insisted in sign. "Tell him I don't remember."

She caught hold of his shoulder as he made to turn back towards the doctor, forced him still and his attention on her. His frustration was distracting him, destroying his focus.

"You need a break," she signed, satisfied when his eyes settled on her. "A drink. Five minutes," she added out loud over his shoulder at the doctor, not sparing him more than a glance.

She didn't release his arm, pushing him out of the room and into one of the waiting room chairs. The reception was newly deserted, the receptionist nowhere to be seen. She walked around the desk to the one-cup machine in the little side office, finding a clean cup and setting it up. Clint probably didn't need the stimulation of coffee right now, but at least the familiarity would be settling.

The receptionist rounded the corner, her heels clacking aggressively against the tiled floor. "He should have tea," she declared, trying to push past Natasha to get at the machine. "I told him he should have tea! You can't give coffee to insomnia patients." Natasha sidestepped her easily, not even bothering to credit the comment with a response.

The coffee maker was thankfully quick, and Natasha pushed back into the waiting area with a hot cup, ignoring the heated glare being shot at her back. Clint was standing again, looking firmer now. He was coming back from whatever adrenaline high he'd flown to. She would blame a heavy handed shrink - especially knowing the limits of Clint's lipreading and how difficult it would make the sessions - but this was what she'd expected to happen here. This was *why* Clint was here, so this didn't happen in the field and get someone killed.

"I'm good," he signed as she approached, his eyes on the cup like he was jealous, like Natasha had made it for herself. "We should go back in."

She pressed the cup into his hands, ignoring the almost-convincing declaration. "Sit. Drink that. Then we'll go back in."

"I'm okay, Tasha," he said out loud, as if that gave more credence to his words. Maybe just because his hands were full - she was over emotional and it was spilling over into her perceptions. She hated that.

"He'll ask the same questions again," Natasha warned as he sat. "Are you happy for me to do this?" There was a difference between 'no one else I can ask' and 'I want you to verbalise my inner horrors and watch as I'm picked apart'.

The cup had been settled between his knees, his hands hovering over the steam as if trying to absorb every iota of warmth. "I trust you," he signed eventually, hesitating again before continuing. "I won't force you..."

"Drink," she interrupted. "We'll go in." Direct and self-doubting in equal measures - Clint was normalising, a good sign. Now if they could just get through this without completely destroying him, that would be good too.

-

Natasha had driven the short distance to the offices to keep Clint from waiting when the text had come in. JARVIS had double-timed the elevator down to the garage and directed her to a wall of keys, giving her full access to the collection. She hadn't really had a chance to appreciate the ridiculous sports car she'd ended up borrowing, but she was pleased to see Clint double-take despite his exhausted lethargy as they stepped into the office block's parking garage.

"I want one," he signed over the roof, making grabby motions for the keys. She ignored him and took the driver's seat for herself, gunning the engine as he took his time getting in. He was smiling as he stretched out in the racing seat. "It sounds like a tank," he said.

She laughed. "It sounds expensive," she corrected in sign, interrupting herself long enough to get out of the underground garage and merge with the heaving late traffic. "Not... broken. There's a difference."

"If you say so." His brief amusement seemed to have disappeared back into lethargy, and he pressed his forehead into the window.

They were back in the tower and in the elevator before he met her eyes again. "What did Loki sound like? His voice."

Natasha took the time to think about the question, phrasing the answer out in sign. "He sounded Russian, and he spoke... formally. Old, like in old books. Some of the words we don't use anymore. Why?"

Clint's eyes were cold. "I remember understanding. Without reading his lips."

Natasha couldn't restrain the shudder as the image of Loki's sneering smile slid through her thoughts. "Thor said his language is interpreted for us. Maybe Loki's words were the same. He called it All-Speak, a universal language."

"Even for me?"

"Magic," Natasha shrugged. "Who knows?"

They'd traced the edges of Clint's memory more than once in the therapist's office today. From Loki's exchange with Selvig and Fury to the point where he'd pulled Clint to his feet and pressed the sceptre to his chest, Clint had been able to recite his every word. Natasha hadn't even been surprised, she'd long stopped being surprised at just how much Clint could pick up in pressurised situations where her own awareness dropped down to just what weapons were where and how far it was to each one. Clint being able to reproduce the words she'd heard in the salvaged footage, when Loki's language was so florid...

He didn't remember anything else until he'd started to come around on the medics backboard as they hustled him through smoking, sparking wreckage to the secure medical bay. He'd had time to take in his surroundings, and the bodies of three unfortunate Agents still protruding arrows before they'd noticed he was conscious and Natasha had given him the shot of sedative they'd had ready.

She hadn't realised how much he'd taken in, in that moment. How aware he'd been of the bruises on her skin, the indications of where he was and what he'd done. How pointed the accusation of those arrows had been.

"Did you mind me being there today - hearing that?" Natasha asked, her hands hesitant.

"It was good," he replied, hands and eyes insistent. "Thank you. I hadn't realised how much... disconnect there was before. I'm tired, and that place unnerves me."

"Why has there been no interpreter?"

Clint shrugged, pressing his shoulders back against the elevator wall. "Bad luck? Incompetence?"

"For someone Stark hires?" Natasha pressed, waiting as they moved out into the hall before calling, "JARVIS?"

"Agent Romanoff," JARVIS replied, his avatar loading on the nearest wall.

"Tony recommended the therapist Clint has been attending, but they've not organised an interpreter for him. Can you arrange something?"

The AI went silent for a moment, and then replied- "I can confirm that there is an ALS interpreter booked for the time of your scheduled sessions, Agent Barton."

"They must have got the idea," Clint shrugged. "I'm going to..." he sighed, hands tensing for a moment. "Food. You're staying, and Steve?"

"We'll have a party," she replied with a smile, trying on gentle. "But first - a shower. I smell of airport."

-

"Hey, what's this?" Natasha looked up at Tony's voice over the speakers JARVIS usually used. Clint shot her a confused look and she explained as Tony added- "JARVIS said you guys were having a party without me in our sweet superhero clubhouse."

Steve stepped out of the kitchen with a concerned look on his face, standing awkwardly with carrot sticks in one hand and dip in the other like he'd been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "Ah... Stark..." he said, "You said if we were in New York..."

"Cool it, Cap. I'm not complaining."

"Are you coming, Stark?" Clint cut in. "Party's just starting."

A video screen loaded on the far wall, Tony sliding into the centre of the shot on a wheely chair, his shoulder and cheek smeared with grease in a way that made it look like he'd fallen asleep in a puddle of it. Knowing what they did of the man, it wasn't altogether impossible.

"On the other side of the country, Hawkass. I didn't get my invitation."

Clint turned to Natasha. "What did he call me?"

"JARVIS," Bruce broke in from the doorway, "How fast could the Iron Man suit get Tony here?"

"It would take sir two hours and twenty three minutes to arrive at the Tower," JARVIS replied, his avatar loading beside Tony's video screen. "Given current prevailing winds and the availability of the fastest suit."

"You could get here before we even get hungry enough to order pizza," Bruce offered with a grin.

-

When Tony ambled through the door, Iron Man suit already shed and leaving him in the same grease-stained vest he'd made the call in, Clint was holding court with a beer in one hand and a forgotten chip in the other.

"The next morning, Sitwell is hungover, a hicky on his neck. The team has the new file from HQ, and on the first page..."

"No," Steve put in, automatic denial in the face of what he knew was coming. Tony was more than a little lost as he threw himself into the nearest seat and snagged a beer, but he was happy enough just to enjoy the horror on Steve's face.

"His girl from last night," Clint grinned, eating his chip and sitting back.

Steve flapped to get Clint's attention before asking, "What did he do?"

"Sitwell? Bolted, and he was senior agent, we didn't know what to do. We all sit there, daring each other to call it in. Five minutes, he comes back with her in handcuffs. She was still asleep in his bed."

"Have we met Sitwell?" Tony asked Bruce in aside, "This sounds like a guy I need to meet."

"I thought Sitwell was in DC?" Steve offered, turning the question to Natasha. "At least, his name was on the paperwork for that briefing which got called off."

Natasha shrugged. "He's not been on base, I think Fury has him troubleshooting. I'd guess the briefing was cancelled because he needed to be somewhere else."

"I hope we get to work together, he sounds a lot like Dugan." Steve fingerspelled through the name, and Tony remembered that picking up some sign had been on his list of things to do. It was a long list, and had been completely overruled by the most recent suit upgrades. "The mission came first, but if he could find his way to a bottle in his hand and a willing girl's bed in the meantime..."

"Is that Dum Dum Dugan, from the comics?" Tony asked, trying not to sound like Captain America comics were something he had a room full of back home.

"I guess so," Steve shrugged. "I haven't read any of the comics. It felt a little narcissistic. But they were based on real people, so I hope they were... respectful, at least."

"Phil sent me to trade a comic for a captured SHIELD Agent," Clint put in. "The warlord seemed like it was a good deal. Phil looked like he was handing a baby." Clint put his hands together in a cradle and mimed shakily passing their contents to Bruce, a look of mock-horror on his face.

"He used to hum the theme tune to that Howling Commandos cartoon from the eighties." Natasha added with a grin. "Any time he was planning out some action or an escape."

Steve mouthed 'Howling Commandos cartoon?' to himself, shaking his head.

"Was that the one where Bucky Barnes was the little kid they inexplicably took on dangerous missions with them?" Tony asked, grinning at Steve's bemusement.

Bruce cleared his throat and in a high voice called; "'Don't worry - Cap won't let you down!'," and then grinned. "Yeah, I caught some of that in college, my first year. The guys in my dorm watched it like it was some kind of cult classic."

"We need to find a copy," Tony decided, forcing his face serious. "For Cap's education in the modern idiom."

"I'm not sure I can watch that," Steve laughed, a little more tightly than before. "I knew Bucky, he was like a brother to me. He wasn't..." He trailed off awkwardly.

"I don't know about the cartoons," Natasha said over the top of her drink, "But real-life Cap almost broke STRIKE-Leader, on our last trip out. I thought he was going to have a meltdown right there."

"Rumlow?" Clint asked, shocked.

"Oh, now this is a story we need to hear." Tony leaned forward to snag another beer.

Natasha turned her easy smile Steve's way. "Come on, Cap. You tell it."

"Uh... you mean the jump?" he asked. "Well... We did a whole lot of tests with... with what was left of the research team Erskine put together, for maybe three weeks tops after the procedure. There wasn't any money, any funding, because they thought the science was a write off, they didn't have enough recorded to replicate what they'd done," Steve glanced at Bruce, clearing his throat awkwardly. "But you knew that. Anyway, these guys, they weren't being paid, they just wanted to get some data - for science. So they drew more blood than I thought I had, tested my sight and hearing and how... I guess how well I was breathing, which I gotta tell you felt pretty fantastic at the time. They made me run and balance and shoot at targets. Everything they could think of that they could do with no time and less equipment."

"I swear, Cap," Tony half-groaned. "You're as bad as Thor with your epic tales."

"We've discussed this, Tony," Natasha broke in. "Whatever conversation you think you had with Thor that turned into some kind of epic poetry reading in the Shwarma joint, you either imagined it or hallucinated it. The man barely said a word. I don't think any of us did much more than eat and doze until they kicked us out."

"We really should have forced you to a hospital," Bruce added, half under his breath.

Steve cleared his throat to hide laughter, poorly, and got a glare from Tony. "Anyway," he continued. "We did a handful of dive tests, because the bay was right there... And we found out I'm pretty good for diving, after I got over the shock of the water and realising my lungs weren't going to seize up. By the end they had me jumping from a height - we found some scaffolding that wasn't in use, over deep enough water..."

"I see where this is going now," Bruce grinned.

"With the Commandos... with my shield, that is, I worked out I could use it to break impacts - the metal it's made of doesn't carry vibration, so I can hit pretty hard without feeling all the force behind it. And falling into water - it's all in that first impact. If you can break that..."

"You jumped, without a 'chute?" Clint asked.

"Without warning anyone," Natasha confirmed, her grin wide with remembered adrenaline.

"I've done it before," Steve shrugged, his smile wide. "It's one hell of a rush, and you gotta make sure you don't hit the big metal target the paras are lining up for."

"No shit," Tony chuckled.

"What did he do?" Clint asked Natasha. "Rumlow?"

"He lost his shit. I've never seen him break down like that. He'd been riffing on world war two technology all flight, so as the bay opens Rogers stands up and makes this big performance about... 'parachute, what does this do again?' then just tosses it to the side, picks up his shield and steps out the hatch. Rumlow's yelling and screaming, trying to get his chute on fast enough to follow, talking about raising the coast guard - like that was going to help."

"Where were you?" Bruce earned himself a flat-eyed glare. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes at her, and corrected his question to- "What did you do?"

"I dropped on target, met Cap there when he dragged himself out of the water."

"So you knew it would work?"

Natasha shrugged easily. "I had no idea it would work. Steve's not an idiot though, despite his shoddy spycraft."

"Thanks," Steve came back, affronted tone belied by his grin.

"I'm working on it. I'll get you up to scratch."

Clint lent in to add, with mock-subtlety; "She's a hard teacher. You played the blindfold paintball game yet?"

"Well that sounds like kinky fun?" Tony said, and grinned at the sour looks turned his way. "Hey, did you guys see the article that claimed I requested a nuke be flown out to Manhattan, so that I could fly it through the portal? Green energy for everyone, and suddenly I have anti-nuclear protesters on my ass after I saved the planet!"

"There's a very convincing youtube video with audio of your communication channel with the helicarrier, calling in a nuclear strike," Bruce told him. "They were calling it 'leaked' audio."

"I would have believed it if I hadn't been there for the original thing," Steve conceded.

"There was a nuke?"

There was a beat as everyone turned to Clint. "What the fuck, Barton?"

He lifted his hands in surrender. "I lost comms. Only caught up because I spotted the big green guy making for the Tower and followed. There was a *nuke*?"

"Didn't you... debrief? Or whatever other innuendo laden excuse for a codeword spies use for 'wow, lets talk about that thing that just happened'."

Clint sat back with a snorted laugh. "I didn't get back to HQ until after we sent Thor home, and no one really wanted to tell me anything, mostly they wanted to ask me questions."

The conversation was by mutual and unspoken agreement dragged away from the events of the Battle of New York, and carried on long into the night.  
-

Bruce felt vaguely zombie-like, stumbling through half-lit corridors towards a promise of warmth, coffee and possibly food if he could scrape together the wherewithal to cook.

The TV was looping a DVD menu, an alsatian in a police cap and a bulldog in a prison-striped jacket chasing each other in perpetuity across the screen, vaguely hypnotic. Clint - visible on the couch as Bruce came further into the room - obviously felt the same, because he took a moment to realise Bruce was there, and then startled with a surprised yelp.

"Sorry," Bruce scrubbed briefly at his chest with his knuckles, and Clint shook his head, pushing his hands through his hair.

"It's okay. No sleep for you?"

Bruce slumped onto the sofa. "I've just spent two days on an experiment based on literature data that is whole factors out."

Clint raised an eyebrow. "The work's no good?"

"Maybe the first hour or so can be saved, but... I was getting frustrated." He chuckled wryly.

"Can't imagine the big guy enjoying... math?"

"He's not great with computers." Bruce shrugged. "Why do people feel the need to publish half-finished, barely-confirmed data? And in medical journals, where there's a real chance that people could be *harmed* by..." Clint had acquired the glazed look of someone who really didn't care, and Bruce cringed. "Sorry," he said again. "I hate wasted time."

"What were you trying to work out, using the bad data?" Clint raised an eyebrow, and Bruce wondered if maybe it was more that he'd lost the other man. "Go easy on me," Clint added. "Science isn't my subject."

"Oh, hey... I've been looking up how to... um..." Bruce shut his eyes for a moment, searching his recall. He'd spent a whole night on this, it shouldn't be so hard. "Cue my speech," he said, his words stilted and slow as he had to think through each handshape and its position before voicing the word. He flushed, feeling exposed and judged even as Clint smiled warmly.

"That's great," Clint said, and Bruce knew the condescension was in his own head but he also knew his skill level right now was far from 'great'. Maybe something showed on his face because Clint's expression fell. "Why are you learning to..." he started.

"Because I have a friend who's deaf and it looks like we might be spending some time together," Bruce snapped, exasperated and only more so when he realised he hadn't even tried to cue the words.

Clint flushed, and Bruce didn't know him well enough to know if it was frustration or embarrassment. Maybe this wasn't the best day for either of them, Clint didn't seem entirely on top of things, and Bruce had slept poorly after Tony's visit, too many ideas swirling in his head.

"You know I can lipread," Clint said, looking honestly confused. "Is it... Am I missing too much?"

It seemed to Bruce there were a lot of wrong answers to that question, starting with "Natasha was worried about you," and including "You seemed to be struggling". This was definitely not the night for this. His fingers trembled with the will to move, but his brain immediately blanked on all the first syllables of all the words he could think to say. A couple of shapes and their associated syllables flitted through his mind, but he couldn't rearrange his words to fit them.

The frustration was a sharp spike - all that time wasted, you're so stupid - and he pushed himself out of his seat without saying anything at all. He was willing his breathing calm and his mind easy. Shoving away that all too familiar voice that lurked in moments like this.

He didn't want Clint to think that he was angry at *him*, not when it was his own shortcomings he was struggling with, his own self-perpetuating frustrations. He'd never been good with languages, he was arguably no good in English when put on the spot, and his brain wasn't handling the movement-to-word association well. Struggling, even, to break down words he knew well, in his own language, into their individual sounds without garbling them unrecognisably.

How was he supposed to do all that, in front of someone? Someone who was comfortable, natural with this, this thing that children could learn? This was a tool schools used to teach children who had difficulty accessing language directly, it wasn't advanced! Steve had learned sign language in a matter of weeks, and he couldn't even... There was a sneer creeping into his mental voice that wasn't his own and he swallowed down the vitriol that was threatening to choke him.

Clint touched his arm - not a surprise, he'd heard him get up and at least part of him had tracked his movements. He half-turned, but couldn't make himself meet the man's eyes, letting his gaze settle somewhere on Clint's sternum because he wasn't going to refuse to show his face and make this *more* insulting.

"This isn't important," Clint said, hesitantly. "This isn't worth getting..." he snorted a laugh, "Angry. What you're doing, it's good. You know, I'm going to miss things sometimes. Or I'll be bored or not care... like when Tony's talking."

Bruce was startled into a hoarse laugh of his own.

"I don't follow much of what Tony says," Clint added, with an air of confession.

"If it helps, not many people do." Bruce shook his head, his mind briefly flooding with handshapes - 'help', he'd practiced that one, and 'I' was only one syllable - and losing them all again. "I've been reading, practising," he said, and in his head that sneer became fully formed and he could hear himself pleading when he added, "I thought I had it."

"Bruce," Clint interrupted, and waited until Bruce had stopped trying to talk before continuing, "I'm tired, you're tired. Let's watch TV. We can try tomorrow, but I don't *need* this, understand?"

He was sharply, painfully angry with himself. Clint was tired, and he was making him deal with this. With his...

He clenched his fists and shut his eyes, feeling the pressure under his skin and biting back everything, forcing his mind utterly quiet. This was good. This was fine. Just switch it all off. Breathe into the silence, and just...

"I need a minute," he said, not opening his eyes. Clint's hand was still on his arm, but it was gently withdrawn.

"I'll find something to watch. Anything you like?"

"Anything. Anything is fine." The black behind his eyelids was pulsing, and he counted the beat, then every other beat, then groups of four. Forcing him to slow down. The TV switched on, a touch too loud - Tony had been watching last - and it was jarring. "JARVIS, mute it," he asked the room, and the sound went. The distraction was already kicking him out of the spiral, though, and the gentle noise of another person was a better reminder than any that the Other Guy wouldn't be welcome right now.

-

Clint had thought that he'd be feeling better. After a proper session with a shrink, after spending a good solid night's sleep pressed into Natasha's shoulder, with a warm and present reminder that whatever else he'd fucked up under Loki's command, he hadn't managed to hurt her. He'd hoped that after a few days filled with good food and good company, he'd be able to keep hold of that feeling when everyone dispersed again.

On the second night in a row screaming himself awake after less than two hours sleep, Clint was feeling far from ready for his next appointment with the therapist, interpreter or no.

Clint took one look at the room as he walked in and felt himself sink. Just Sandridge stood by his desk, there was no sign of anyone else. "This isn't going to work today, I'm too tired."

Sandridge said something, Clint wasn't sure he even cared what it was, and then moved across the room. Maybe he'd seen how poorly Clint was tracking his lips, he wasn't even trying to talk as he coaxed him to the table at the back of the office. The high-backed chair he pulled out was probably a good idea - Clint was going to doze off if he sat in the damned comfy chair.

That was his name on Sandridge's lips, as he took the seat opposite and took a sip of the tea - again unrequested - that the receptionist had thrust into his hands, and he was tapping his ear with a question on his face, maybe asking about his hearing aids.

"I've been trying to sleep," Clint answered a guessed-at question. "Sometimes not wearing them for a day helps." It wasn't like they were going to help right now. The up-tick in his lip-reading comprehension they provided was marginal, and he was barely focusing on the basics right now.

Sandridge looked more frustrated than sympathetic, and Clint wondered if he was being hard to understand. No hearing aids and tired probably wasn't the best combination for anyone else understanding him, but he wasn't going to apologise to this guy right now.

"If you'd sort a 'terp, we wouldn't have this problem," he said, dropping his head into his arms.

Sandridge tapped against his arm until Clint looked up, and then pushed a legal pad across the table.

"Maybe this will be good for you," it read. "You're obviously tired. Take the couch, get comfortable, talk to me about that day until you doze off. If you can sleep the two hours, all the better."

-

Clint wasn't sure what had woken him, only that he was suddenly, sharply, awake. He was still on Sandridge's couch, but the man wasn't in the seat opposite. His heart was thundering with the surge of adrenaline, ridiculous scenarios spinning as he scanned what he could see of the room without giving away his waking state. The room was empty, and he sat quickly, scanning every corner twice. He didn't know what he was expecting to see lurking, but his hands itched for a gun. That as much as anything was a reminder of how irrational this all was - he never wanted a gun over his bow when he was in any real danger.

The change in light caught his attention as the door cracked open, and he moved quickly to stand against the wall. As the door opened fully he crouched to be below the height of a gun-sweep. It put him in a poor position to see Sandridge's lips as he stepped through the door, his attention on the man behind him, but he picked up "...aren't taking effect. Put him in the machine," as the man turned to glance through the opened door.

The swirling paranoia solidified into something heavy and sharp in his gut.

Sandridge startled when he saw the empty couch, and Clint had him inside the room and pushed up against the wall before he could open his mouth to shout. His head hit against the plaster hard enough that it bounced, and something fell from the shelf beside him.

"What's the machine?" Clint demanded. The second person was pulling feebly at the arm Clint was using to hold Sandridge against the wall, and Clint shook him off. "What is it?"

The adrenaline was still making him dizzy and unfocused, his mouth parched and his muscles aching deeply. For every word of Sandridge's reply he understood, there were a handful more he didn't. There was maybe 'memories' and 'scanner', and then Sandridge was staring over Clint's shoulder at the other man and a security guard with a tazer was looming in the doorway.

Not looking to get tazed right now, Clint dropped Sandridge and backed away a couple of steps, his hands in the air. If he could disarm the guard, he could take him easily. He just needed a minute for his head to stop spinning.

The other guy - another therapist by the look of him, white coat, glasses - was trying to get his attention, and Clint risked taking his eyes off the guard. He was a big guy, he'd have time if he started to move.

"It's my patient," the other therapist was saying, his speech more purposeful than Sandridge's. "We were talking about my patient, do you understand, Mr. Barton?"

"Your patient?"

"He's been having blackouts. I'm sending him back to the hospital because I think it's medical, not psychological. Doctor Sandridge was agreeing with me."

"The machine?"

Whatever he said in reply, Clint didn't understand, but his expression obviously said that for him. He pulled a pen from his top pocket and scrawled 'MRI' across the palm of his own hand. With it written, Clint could read the acronym off the guy's lips as he repeated, "MRI - it's a brain scanner."

Clint had been through plenty of MRIs in his life, head injuries were a hazard of the job and one of the reasons the last audiologist who had recommended an implant over his regular hearing aids had been laughed out of the room.

The adrenaline was ebbing, leaving him buzzy and adrift. "I should go..." he said, glancing back at the guard, then at Sandridge, who was rubbing at his chest with an angry expression. The buzzy feeling was turning into a dizzying spin, making him stagger. It felt like the air he was breathing was heavier than usual, thick down his throat and not filling his lungs the way he needed.

The other therapist was in his space, a hand on his arm. He wanted to pull away from the contact, but instead his balance tilted and he collapsed against the wall. The therapist was talking to Sandridge, his expression oddly triumphant, and Clint had a sharp metallic taste in his mouth as he slid to the floor and the room faded out.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. Massive thanks as always to KiraGecko for the awesome beta job. You're so patient with me. :) Thanks.
> 
> This chapter will make more sense if you've seen Winter Soldier and have some idea of what kind of craziness is going on in SHIELD post-Avengers. However I only ever watched two seasons of Agents of SHIELD and haven't seen Civil War, so I'm probably way more out of date than you guys.

Clint wouldn’t ever truly know what his brother said to him while they were young. He’d been smart enough to work with what cues he had been given to avoid angering his brother or his friends. He’d learned what he could do to turn frustrations aside, learned how to appease. Even still, he never knew what words were being thrown at him moment to moment.

Some things he’d worked out, some things he’d picked up through repetition, some things they’d had signs for between themselves, and then there were the things that he’d put together later. Things he’d worked out so much later that he’d doubted his own memory and recognition – things that he couldn’t possibly have understood in the moment but he had understood the gist and only as an adult had things become clear.

The first time an instructor at the academy had told him about mandatory psych profiling he’d said – with an ASL interpreter behind his shoulder – ‘Don’t worry, Clint, we won’t let the men in white coats take you away’. He’d been joking, trying to set Clint at ease, but Clint had taken those words and applied them to his brother’s face. There was that one expression, the shape of his mouth, the look in his eyes. Barney had made it a threat, not a joke, and he’d repeated it often.

There was no way to be sure, of course. It might just have been Clint connecting dots that had never been linked in the first place. But Clint knew instinctively that Barney had threatened him with men in white coats who would come and take him away, take him away from Barney so that his brother wouldn’t have to be responsible for him anymore.

What had been a nebulous threat of ‘away’ when he was a kid turned sharp once he knew exactly what was being threatened. He’d had nightmares for a week and had faced his first psych profiling session looking like a zombie.

In the moments of consciousness after Loki and before Natasha had taken his hand, and maybe in the hours after that while he’d tried to get it all straight in his head, Clint had wondered whether he was going to end up locked away somewhere.

He knew what he’d done, if not any of the specifics. He knew that his arrows had killed SHIELD agents, that his skills had been used by the alien that had come through the portal, that he had cracked in some way that had let the monster in.

He knew what all of that meant, he did, he’d just been waiting for the moment when SHIELD realised the same thing. He was just waiting for the men in white coats…

-

Clint came back to consciousness in a narrow cot, facing a white washed wall. The room had the sterile antiseptic smell that came with most governmental facilities, along with the sharp fluorescent light to make sure you were on edge. He was wearing a jumpsuit in a drab grey colour, no watch or shoes or hearing aids.

He wasn't in scrubs at least, but then he already knew this wasn't a hospital. At least... not a medical hospital.

He rolled over, feeling a drugged slowness pulling at his limbs and his thoughts, to take in his surroundings. The room had a small desk; and the flimsy plastic stool, drain and tiny basin in the corner were probably the extent of the bathroom facilities.

With no small effort, he struggled upright, pushing away a pulsing headache that gripped his temples as he tried to work out what had happened, how he'd arrived here. The gunshot wound in his side ached distantly, and a quick glance showed a fresh bandage across the injury.

Closing his eyes took away the feeling that the ground was swaying, but he still couldn't remember anything between lying down to sleep at the shrink's office and waking up in this cell.

Had Loki come again?

His breathing stuttered and he forced his eyes open, studying the white walls for the colour shift that had come with the breaking of Loki's control last time. The walls were nothing but white, poorly painted and pitted and scarred in places.

Except... there was one wall with a perfect surface, no marks or blemishes. It didn't look like the other walls at all, now he was looking more closely. The curiosity was enough to distract him from his dizziness and drag him off the cot to his feet. He staggered a little as he stood with one hand still pressed to his side. His balance was shot and his head heavy, and he wondered how long he'd been out and what they’d given him to keep him unconscious while they’d moved him.

On closer inspection, the odd wall was the same colour as the other three, but as he reached out a hand towards it, he found it wasn't painted brick like the others. Instead it was clouded glass, cold to the touch and with a static buzz to it.

He swayed on his feet as he lent forwards, pressing with both hands and trying to look across the surface to see if it would yield to pressure. His vision was fuzzing at the edges and he gave up the investigation to stumble back towards the bed. Collapsing down onto it, Clint pressed his face into the meager pillow to try and stop the world from swaying.

He had no idea how long it was before he woke again, his head unbearably heavy and the light above too bright to make it worth even trying to open his eyes. He still didn't know if this was a cell or an isolation room. He had some idea that being institutionalised came with padding on the walls and strait jackets, but maybe that was a stereotype, something he'd gotten from films. It wasn't like he was trying to hurt himself, maybe he hadn't earned a padded room.

Maybe this was just the end of SHIELD's plan. He'd had long enough to heal up - for them to make sure Loki had no more influence over his behaviour, maybe - and then back-to-back missions cleaning up the mess he'd made under Loki's command. Recapturing the enemies he'd released, recovering all the munitions and armoury he'd shifted in preparation for the next phase... Then he'd gotten hurt - couldn't even keep himself in one piece long enough to do the basic level 1 wetwork they were sending his way. He wasn’t worth rehabilitating, they might as well put him away somewhere, out of sight.

Anger sparked, a rush of adrenaline that made his head pound but got him upright and braced. He had worked too hard, he'd done everything they asked of him, he wasn't going to let them put him away in some cell somewhere, forgotten.

He opened his eyes and found the glass wall now transparent, an armoured and full-facemask and helmeted guard standing on the other side. The startle was enough to have him on his feet, crossing the few steps to stand opposite the guard. He swayed a little as he stopped, and propped one shoulder against the wall in an attempt to hide the effects of whatever they'd given him.

Beyond the guard, outside of the glass, a second cell faced his. The man inside was either mutant or alien, with two more arms than would be usual and eyes that were matt and dark. He was studying Clint carefully from the front of his own cell, but shuffled away when he noticed Clint looking back.

The guard straightened in front of the glass wall, still looking in. The shapeless uniform and the tactical vest, coupled with the whole-face mask and helmet made him look like a Star Wars bad guy.

The guard's hand gestured briefly, and Clint realised he was being talked at. He briefly weighed up pretending to ignore what was being said - SOP for his capture - but the need to know what was going on outweighed protocol.

"Are you serious?" he asked as the guard gestured. He knew his voice would make the situation clear, but he added - "I need to see your face if you want me to understand you," in case they thought returning his hearing aids would be enough. "Or find me a fucking interpreter." There was a phrase that had gotten old about a decade ago.

The guard's masked head tipped slowly to the side, considering, and then he left.

The guy in the opposite cell had moved to stand against the glass again, watching as the guard walked away. He turned back to Clint when the guard was out of sight.

"You hear me?" he asked, pointing to his ears with two of four hands.

"No," Clint answered plainly. "But I can read your lips." The mutant looked startled, then amused. "What was he saying?" Clint asked.

"Welcome speech," he shrugged. His eyes narrowed as he considered Clint carefully. "You're powerful, to bring you in unconscious."

"Just powerful friends," Clint denied, wondering exactly where those friends were right now. "Where are we?"

"Desert, somewhere. They call it the Fridge."

"The Fridge?" Clint repeated, reeling. He'd suspected, but he hadn't really thought... He lost focus on what his new friend was saying as he stepped back, pressing himself into the corner of his cell.

The Fridge.

Any hope of escape evaporated. No one escaped from the Fridge. The staff worked six month shifts with no shore leave and there was no ground-level access to the skyscraper-like prison. SHIELD had taken him as far away from the Avengers as they could, and they'd done it when he was alone and not expected anywhere any time soon.

The mask was a new addition to the SHIELD uniform - maybe to protect them from the objects stored in this place, maybe some kind of filtering system, maybe even a heads-up display in the visor. The Fridge had always held the most dangerous things - people, chemicals, unidentified contaminants - SHIELD had ever taken possession of.

Why had they waited so long before taking him? Was it just to make sure the Avengers weren't available to help him out? Natasha would object to his incarceration, but she'd been called out on a relentless schedule of missions with Steve, just like Clint had the last few months.

No, it didn't make any sense. If this was SHIELD they wouldn't need a reminder that he couldn't talk with a guy in a mask. Unless they didn't have his file - maybe SHIELD didn't want the guards here to know who he was, what he'd been a part of. Maybe for his own good... or maybe so no one could find out where he was.

It was hours later when the guard next approached, this time with a familiar face at his shoulder.

"Paul?" Clint used the name-sign he'd been introduced by years ago, when Paul had been an interpreter for the SHIELD Academy. The interpreter looked confused, but he was looking at Clint, not taking in his surroundings or the remarkable people in the cells around them. He obviously worked here, and that more than anything convinced Clint that he was being held by SHIELD.

"What is this man doing here?" Paul demanded verbally, "He's a hero, he shouldn't be here."

The guard obviously said something, earning him a glare.

Paul switched to sign, turning fully to Clint to say; "We'll get you out of here, Clint. They don't know who you are, you're not supposed to be here."

"They knocked me out," Clint replied. "I can't understand with the masks..."

Paul was shaking his head, frustrated. "I think that's why they called me. They're not allowed to take off the masks in here."

Paul hesitated, and Clint noticed the guard moving his head towards Paul, a clear question in his body. "What's he saying?" he asked.

"He's insisting we talk out loud. They're recording, I can insist on sign..."

"It's fine," Clint said out loud.

Paul glanced at the guard, before signing; "This facility is built to contain dangerous threats, you will not escape, poor behaviour will be punished. You will be provided food and water in accordance with the Geneva Conventions..."

Paul cut himself off to ask the guard something. Clint thought he caught 'prisoner' and the guard's posture turned confrontational.

"Paul," Clint said, pulling their attention back. "Am I a prisoner, or an asset? Will they question me?"

"Yes, they'll question you."

Clint's head was already shaking, "I don't remember anything that happened while..."

Paul's hand asked him to wait a second while he listened to the guard. "There's technology here," he repeated with a frown, glancing back to the guard with- "You need to explain it to me if you want him to understand..." Paul's shoulders stiffened. "They have technology that can access the memories."

-

The wall had gone opaque again when the guard had left with a reluctant Paul, and a tray of something vaguely resembling food had appeared through an invisible gap a few hours later.

There was a cup of lukewarm tea that made him cringe, still not sure what had happened between the shrink's office and ending up here. His head was clearing as the drugs left his system, and he was reluctant to be dosed again. He poured the tea down the drain and kicked the rest of the tray back over to the door.

He was considering trying to sleep off the last of the headache when the wall flickered and cleared, showing just Paul on the other side.

Hope surged briefly before reality set in - Paul wasn't going to have any way to get him out of this place, even if he wanted to. Paul studied him carefully before asking; "Are you okay? This is bad, this whole thing is bad, but are you okay?"

Clint moved to sit cross-legged on the end of the cot, shrugging easily. "Can you get me out?" he asked.

Paul glanced back down the hall before shaking his head. "I'm sorry, the paperwork for your transfer is all signed off. I don't know what's going on, but... it's above board."

"How did you get here?"

"I was due a transfer to Pegasus, taking over from Tas so she could take leave. But..." he hesitated, and Clint recalled his briefing on the collapse of the Pegasus facility. "Instead I got diverted here. There's a hard of hearing guy in accounts, but he doesn't need on-site support. When I first saw you, I thought the transfer made more sense, but they can't have known back then."

Clint swallowed down bile. They'd prepared for him coming here since the moment Loki took him. "Is Selvig here too?"

Paul's eyes narrowed. "Who?"

"Erik Selvig - scientist from Pegasus. Loki... had him too."

Paul nodded, pulling a notepad out of his pocket and taking down the name. "I can find out. They won't give me any more information on the tech but whatever it does, it sounds like I'll be needed." He hesitated, holding Clint's gaze. "Do you need me to lie to them?" he asked at last. "If it's torture, they can't expect you to talk through it. We'll insist on sign, and I can..."

"No," Clint cut him off sharply. "You can't... if they find out, you'll be in a cell too. Don't risk anything where they can see you, but the next time you have leave, I need you to send a message for me."

-

The lights had gone out not long after Paul had left with Stark's private email address and a coded message. He couldn't risk sending anything to Natasha, too much of a chance that SHIELD would be able to intercept her, but Stark was an element they couldn't control.

He'd not slept any better in a cell than he had in Stark's ridiculous suite or on the missions he'd had in between, fits and starts and dreams where he remembered nothing but the cold, emptiness. He wondered where the shrink's sleep monitor had gone, whether it was still transmitting data somewhere.

When the lights came back on he was exhausted and bored in equal measures, but at the very least the sluggish drugged feeling was gone. The tray that came through the glass wall for breakfast didn't look any more appealing than the one at dinner, so it didn't take much determination to ignore it. He risked drinking the tea this time though, dehydration was a nasty way to go.

After what he guessed was probably an hour, boredom took over from exhaustion and he started working through his morning exercises, wary of the small space and the healing injury in his side. The routine was cathartic, even if he did ensure he was always facing the glass wall, ready for any change. While he was still exhausted when he got to the end of the workout, he felt more at ease than he had since he'd woken up in this place.

Stark would get his message even if it did take four months to reach him, and Natasha would come for him. He knew he didn't deserve to be here, he just had to wait this out.

When the opaque wall changed again, Paul was standing on the other side with a frown on his face. He didn't bother with any greetings, opening with; "Selvig was here, but he was released just before they brought you in. He had a mental breakdown when he got home, arrested for public nudity. And..." Paul glanced over his shoulder before looking back. "Stark is dead."

Clint felt frozen, chilled to the bone. "What?"

"He's dead. His home was blown up. He threatened a terrorist and..."

Clint didn't wait for more, turning his back on Paul and sitting carefully on the end of the bed. It felt like he was shattering, falling into pieces. Bruce had been thoroughly contained to the Tower, but he would be vulnerable now Tony was gone. Could SHIELD be responsible for that too?

If SHIELD was separating them, isolating them, would Natasha be safe out there with Steve? How much would it take to engineer a mission gone wrong? And Selvig - was he just recovering from Loki's fallout in his own way, or had Loki left something in their minds?

And here he was, helpless and isolated. His brother's face loomed in his memories, his hands up and signing – "the men in white coats will take you away, forever."


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot thank you all enough for your patience. This chapter runs parallel to the events of Winter Soldier.

The DC office carpool was boring. So, so boring. Options came in various shapes and sizes of matte black utility vehicle, with a couple of armoured trucks and jeeps thrown in for interest (also in matte black). A remarkable number had SHIELD logos on the side, given they were supposed to be an invisible spy division.

The message she'd received had given her an hour to prep and she'd only needed ten minutes, so she was sitting around in the carpool waiting for Rumlow to turn up with the rest of his team. STRIKE always were a disorganised bunch, but then... it wasn't as if Team Delta had been unusual in that respect. When she, Clint and Coulson had been part of STRIKE they'd caused Agent Hand one or two nightmares in the command room.

They'd never needed an hour to prep, though. They were always far too eager to get out into the field.

The thought of Coulson's eager grin was enough to sting. Being in DC had put her far away from what felt like the last of her friends. Hill was keeping her up to date, and she'd had a couple of days in New York earlier in the month, but they'd lost so many people in the alien attack it felt like she wanted eyes on all of her important people all of the time.

It was interesting to consider that Rogers had become one of those important people so quickly. Having him nearby, training him and training with him, had been a balm. But Fury was acting strange, distancing himself from them all in ways he hadn't after Loki's attack, and she was dealing with enough strange right now.

This was boring. A matte black person sat in the middle of a matte black carpark, waiting for some more matte black people to turn up. At least they'd get to pick up Steve on the way to the airfield. There was one person who couldn't do matte black if you painted him with it. They were still trying to, but even his damned SHIELD uniform had a big shiny star on the chest.

She pulled out her phone, and pondered for a moment before shooting off a text to Tony. "In DC, bored of the SHIELD carpool. Recommendations?"

Her phone buzzed almost immediately, but it wasn't a reply from Tony. Instead it was a message from Clint, letting her know he was being called out and would be radio silent for a while. How long wasn't specified, but then that wasn't unusual.

"I thought you were on leave until healed?" she sent back, watching as the 'delivery pending' timer turned. SHIELD wouldn't send him anywhere too dangerous with stitches still healing in his side, but the radio silent message meant his phone would be turned off as soon as he left the ground.

Tony replied while she was still waiting for the message to go through, just a location and 'Mis carros son tus carros'. The message to Clint didn't connect. She sighed and pocketed her phone, shouldering her bag as she moved to the internal phone on the wall. She could pick up Steve herself, spend the extra time pretending they were friends with normally coloured lives as they headed off to be international superspies one more time.

"Be safe," she added to the message on its way to Clint. It would live in limbo until he got back and turned his phone back on, but sometimes messages like that were more for the sender than the recipient.

-

Clint had often wondered, when he'd heard stories of the Fridge, how you kept a self-contained tower block filled with bored agents, dangerous prisoners and volatile technology from spontaneously combusting.

Turned out it was through a seriously punishing PT regime, where twice a day two agents per prisoner took a running tour of their allocated floor, stopped in a gym for an hour of drills and then packaged them back off to their cells with a daily detour via medical and a heavily supervised shower and shave.

There was more than one running route, but they never passed anything resembling stairs or an elevator, or even windows to the outside. He wasn't allowed to stop, and the guard behind was liberal with a shock baton if he tried.

The first time he made the whole trip without earning a confrontation with the baton, he got back to his cell to find an e-reader on his desk with a randomised collection of fiction, non-fiction and periodicals. All of the magazines and newspapers were older than twelve months; nothing in them that he could use, and no information on Stark or his death, but he was willing to take the bribery at face value.

Paul hadn't reappeared since the morning two days ago, and Clint was worried for him. He'd taken a risk telling Clint about Tony and Selvig, he'd taken a risk just talking to him in here, but there was nothing Clint could do other than wait. The 'machine' hadn't been mentioned again, but it loomed over him with heavy threat. He didn't *need* to remember what had happened to Loki. He wasn't even sure he wanted that. But they needed something he knew, and they needed Paul to get it out of him, so Paul would be safe. He had to trust that Paul would be safe.

It was the second run of the day – the one that didn't come with a shower, just a cup of the same bitter, luke warm tea waiting for him in his cell – and as Clint was hustled towards the deactivated forcefield of his cell he found Paul standing with a familiar face, waiting for him.

"I was wondering when you might turn up," Clint mused, playing down his pounding heartbeat.

The shrink – maybe Sandridge, or maybe that wasn't his real name - looked more at home in a white coat. The full face masks were just for the guards apparently, though from experience being able to see his face wasn't going to cut it with this guy, unless the mumbling had been part of the character. At least this time it looked like Clint would have Paul. There was a clipboard and a file on the table, but no pens, paperclips or staples that he could see. He could do some damage with a decent weight paper file, folded properly, but it wasn't going to get him out of his cell or out of the building.

"Don't judge me too harshly, Mr. Barton. We did try this the easy way first."

"So you brought me here to work on my insomnia?" Clint asked, with an insincere smile, stepping into his cell and wiping his face with the towel on the end of his bed. He downed the tea before turning back to his guests.

"I have no interest in your health beyond preserving your knowledge. I was sure our talks would prove useless, but management insisted and they pay both our wages. The next step is more risky than the drug-and-talk method. Dr. Selvig… didn't handle it well."

"You never prescribed me any drugs," Clint pointed out, swallowing back bile at the mention of Dr. Selvig - fresh in his mind was Paul telling him that Selvig had left here only to have a breakdown.

"The potential for non-compliance is too high in prescribed medicine. I prefer more direct methods. My colleagues tell me you still drink your tea?"

Clint glanced at the table where the paper cup sat empty. He hadn't even noticed the taste over the last few days.

"Now you're here, I have permission to proceed, and reassurance that your friends will not intrude…" Paul hesitated long enough that Clint glanced at Sandridge, registering a sinister smirk as he said; "The ones still alive."

Adrenaline flooded Clint's system. "What?"

"Prepare yourself. Get some sleep. Tomorrow will be unpleasant, but necessary."

"No, wait. What's happened to…" Sandridge was already walking out of view down the hall. "Paul, what's going on?"

Paul watched Sandridge go, his own expression wide-eyed and shocky as he turned back to Clint. "The news reports we get are all on a delay, but I haven't heard anything, Clint. I mean, after Tony Stark…"

"If they go after Cap we might never know, but Bruce… if they go after the Hulk it'll be all over the news. Tasha…" Clint kicked the leg of the table, the cup skittering off as he resisted the urge to keep kicking until something gave. "What do they want from me?"

"I've been talking to the techs, trying to get some information. There's a machine that they want to use to question you. It sounds like it will… hurt," Paul swallowed hard, his hands shaking. "Clint, it sounds like torture, I can't… I can't be part of your torture."

"Paul, I need you here, and calm. If I can't answer their questions it will be worse for me. I'm sorry, but I need you here."

-

The machine was set up like an MRI - a metal table with a glowing ring of electronics at the head end. It was in a little room on its own, with a door through to a control booth with a big glass window. Paul had been allowed through with him, which made them both a little uneasy, and Sandridge and the two techs that had escorted them down here were visible in the control booth.

There was a little vibration as he sat on the table, just enough to make his skin tingle. He wondered if it was an audible noise, if it was part of how the machine worked. Someone tried to show him a sonic knock-out gun once and had been annoyed when Clint had acted unimpressed. His hearing aids had built-in protection against excessive volumes, and mostly he'd just heard feedback. Some people didn't think these things through.

"Lie down and put your head in the cradle," Paul signed, a little pinch of a frown between his brows even when he was trying to look professional.

"I feel like I should be fighting this," Clint observed, flattening a hand on the bench and trying to work out why he didn't feel like running. He hadn't even been coerced here, really. There just wasn't anywhere else to go. If he could run, he might be able to find somewhere to hide before the next shift change. The building had more than one kitchen, there was sure to be a food storage room that would hold him out that long.

He glanced at the two technicians stood just behind the shrink, moving around and talking over the screens and charts laid out between them and Paul. They didn't look up as the shrink started talking, and Clint looked to Paul.

"The results will be better if you're relaxed. We don't want to force you, and medications obscure the results."

"I don't want you to force me either," Clint offered with a shrug. He sat on the bench and positioned himself so that his head was against the metal support. The vibration left an itchy feeling in the back of his teeth. He shuffled until he could see Paul without moving out of the cradle, before signing 'No pillow?' Paul's brows smoothed out for a moment as his lips twisted in amusement, echoing the question out to the scientists.

One of them looked up and frowned, the other looking around him as if he might have just mislaid a pillow around here somewhere and it would come to light if he had a poke around, but Sandridge didn't look interested.

"There will be some information, then a question, and then the machine will activate. Hold the question in your mind. As soon as you can, answer the question. The faster you answer, the less it…" Paul's expression hardened, "hurts," he finished.

Clint bit down on his tongue as the itch in his jaw started to irritate him. "Seriously, no pillow?"

Paul glared at his non-reaction to the threat of torture, and then pulled off his black fleece, offering it to Clint. "Pillow," he explained.

Curiosity was the thing that had Clint finally settling down under the oddly glowing ring. Paul's sweater was still body-warm beneath his head and shoulders, and a deep breath brought his deodorant and body smell to Clint's nose. It wasn't a familiar smell – he and Paul had never been *that* good friends, but it was a human smell instead of an electronics smell, and that was enough.

"OK," he signed, and let his hands settle at his side.

"You are in Pegasus Base, Loki has just…"

Clint's eyes flicked over Paul's shoulder as one of the technicians leant over the other the one at the controls and said; "Slowly, remember Selvig…" and Clint was gone in a static wash, even as adrenaline surged through him.

He didn't have to watch, and that didn't seem strange to him even though he'd spent decades now, obsessively watching people - their lips and body language, flitting from face to face to try and minimise how much of any interaction he missed. And there was always a lot he missed, always, but it was like in this moment he could just accept the information. He didn't have to watch, and it didn't seem strange. It just was.

He'd been taking orders from higher and higher up the command chain the last few years, either because his bosses had been promoted or because he'd been making himself useful to the right people, and he wasn't cowed by the fact that he was taking orders from someone as significant, as *revered* as Loki, but it crossed his mind that he should have been aware of the significance of the title *God* when it had been introduced to him.

He'd never had a great deal to do with any kind of faith, and God was a bit of a nebulous concept. He'd always had more respect for the guys who paid his rent and his bills.

So instead of worrying about the God stood in front of him, he followed the orders he'd been given. There was something… more to what was going on around him, through him, some noise or vibration that he was aware of but couldn't put a label to. Something under his skin or behind his eyes that was giving him information like a briefing fed directly into his brain. He knew the next stages of the plan, knew the required components and was all too ready to identify the threats to success.

He nearly headbutted the cradle as he folded, retching off the side of the bench. He was freezing cold and he struggled against the hand on his shoulder, Loki's eyes staring out of a memory and praising him in ways that bypassed his ears and inspired utter loyalty.

His mind finally resolved Paul, his long dark hair almost too much, but offset by his warm skin and brown eyes. Paul was signing, speaking, but Clint couldn't look away from his eyes for the longest time.

"When Loki spoke," he found himself saying. "I heard him."

Paul froze for a second before glancing back at the window through to the control room. He stepped back as Clint collapsed back onto the cold bench. "What did he say?" Paul signed eventually.

"Your plans are adequate." Loki seemed at home with the touch screen tablet he'd delivered his briefing notes on. He'd used the usual template, and taken off the SHIELD logo at the last minute. He'd thought about trying to find some more appropriate image to replace it with, but had eventually just left the space blank. Loki's lips quirked around an insincere smile, and Clint tensed – wondered if he'd made some mistake.

"I see you've even estimated the costs to our cause and the potential enemy fatalities. How very considerate," Loki said, still paging through the briefing. "I think you'll find you've underestimated, considerably."

Clint surfaced with a gasp, his stomach rolling but not as badly as the first time. He must have been talking through the vision, because they didn't ask him for what he had seen, just pushed ahead with another question the moment he made eye contact with Paul, barely giving him time to catch his breath.

"Did you see the tesseract?"

He hated the scientist for how easily he earned Loki's praise, watching their exchanges from the shadows. It had taken time to gather the militia, to arm them and to retrieve SHIELD uniforms from safe houses across Europe. None of these men trusted him but they had seen the tesseract's power even if they hadn't been possessed by it, and they would follow its humming song. The technicians had been trickier to source, the supplies harder still, and all Selvig had to do was build to the image in his heart, the instructions the tesseract whispered directly into his mind.

He didn't deserve Loki's admiring gaze, Clint wanted it for himself.

Maybe once the machine was built and the war started. Clint could...

Clint moaned as his head spiked with pain, his stomach starting to cramp against the intense nausea. He retched again, curling around his stomach and pressing his forehead to the cold metal.

"Did you see Loki speak with Selvig?" Paul asked as he straightened, and there was no visceral rush this time, his head out of the cradle, but the information was there in his mind.

"He knew Selvig was a scientist, he asked questions to match his designs with our technology, our units and measures..."

"What questions," Paul… no, it was Sandridge he was talking to, and Clint could see him almost pressed into the glass with interest over Paul's shoulder.

"The speed of light, the weight of hydrogen, our units for force, speed, acceleration, radioactive decay, dark matter concentration, light intensity..."

"Dark matter concentration?"

Clint leant back as his head spun, feeling like he weighed twice what he should, the gravity suddenly turned right up. His head met the cradle and…

"How can your people be so backwards? Your technology advances and your science limps along behind, advancing only to solve consumer problems, never looking beyond the end of your grasping avaricious hand." Loki was raving, and Selvig should have been cowering, but instead he was nodding his agreement.

Clint watched as the scientists gathered to express their joy that at last they had a leader who would appreciate exploration and scientific endeavour, the desire for knowledge. Loki didn't share anything more with them or ask any more questions, taking a step out of the forming circle with a wary look, confused by this turn of events.

He turned and found Clint watching, his eyes narrowing. After a moment, he started to smile. "How strange," he said, "After all this time, to find that in the middle of all creation – a universe of knowledge and science at my fingertips, it is the soldiers, the war I understand best. How well the All Father has brainwashed me." The smile turned bitter, and Loki turned his back on them all and left. 

-

Clint opened his eyes with the realisation that they'd been shut for longer than he knew – like he'd lost consciousness at some point and was only just now coming back to himself. The intense pressure of the machine was gone, the sickening nausea lessening by the moment. Paul's hand was gripped around his wrist with pulsing pressure, but Paul's eyes were distant and his face looked pained.

"Paul?" Clint lunged forwards as the man keeled towards the ground, his body stiff and unblinking. "Hey! I need a doctor!" he said forcefully, but he couldn't see either of the technicians in the booth, or Sandridge.

A screen in the corner of the room flickered, catching his attention as it loaded a clear shot of Fury's face.

"Agent Barton," he said, cueing smoothly. Clint had no idea when Fury had learned to cue, but he couldn't scrape together the energy for surprise, lowering Paul the rest of the way to the ground and pulling his jumper off the machine's cradle to shove under his head. "You should be the only one standing. You have twelve minutes to collect storage box 00912 and leave the facility. There will be no extraction." His face disappeared and a map of the building loaded, his path to the exit via the storage area marked and a timer counting down.

He spared a moment to check Paul was breathing and with practised movements moved him into the recovery position. There was blood in his ear, smeared across his cheek on one side where Clint had moved him, but he didn't have time to investigate.

He pulled the door out of the little lab open, finding the two technicians and Sandridge all collapsed on the floor in the control booth. They were all bleeding from the nose and ears. He hesitated for a regretful moment, but there was no way they could blame his escape on Paul when he was unconscious with the rest of them, he was probably safer here than on the run with Clint.

He stole an access card and a watch from the technicians and he bolted out through the door. It only took a handful of minutes to reach corridors he'd never seen before, and suddenly there were signs and labels on doors. There were only a few guards around, all slumped against the nearest wall or doorway, a few unlucky ones sprawled out across the floor where they hadn't managed to catch themselves. Apart from the omnipresent masks, the uniform was chillingly familiar. He didn't risk stopping to check if anyone was still alive. There wasn't time, and if they were alive then the time limit meant that either they would be getting up soon or… the airstrike that followed would take care of anyone left.

Finally, the door marked Storage appeared, and he shouldered his way inside. The shelves seemed to go on for miles, but like the hallways outside they were meticulously labelled, and he pushed down the instinctual flush of terror and dived into the narrow shelving.

There was an unmasked operative on the floor next to his allotted space, and he reached over him to pull out the archive box with his name on it. Flipping the lid, he pushed aside his clothes to pull out his shoes, phone and keys. His hearing aids and their batteries had been separated, in two little plastic baggies, and he shoved them into the pile. He fished around, throwing the clothes out onto the floor, and was about to give his wallet up as lost when he glanced back down at the guard on the floor.

He gave him a kick as he tugged his wallet out of stiff fingers, not waiting around long enough to check it was intact. He was sprinting then, out into the hallway and headed for the roof. He hoped there was some kind of transport out of there, he wasn't exactly dressed for a zipline escape.

As he shouldered through the roof entrance, not waiting for the doors to slide all the way apart, his stolen watch told him he had thirty seconds to finish his escape. If there was about to be fireworks, he was probably already too late. There was a helicopter on the roof, its rotors still slowly turning, a guard slumped in the pilot's seat. Clint pulled him clear and glanced at the watch as he hurried through checks. He saw the guard relax out of his unnatural tension as twelve minutes ticked over, hand reaching almost immediately for the gun at his side.

Out of time.

-

As he brought the copter down in a remote field, Clint wished he'd thought to at least grab his jeans on the way out. Not only was it frustrating not having any pockets for his stuff, he figured walking into the nearest store in an institutional grey jumpsuit and asking them to call the Avengers for him… well, it probably wouldn't go down well.

He'd stolen clothes off a line before, him and his brother both, but the sky was grey as rain threatened so it wasn't going to be easy to find anything.

His cell battery was dead, and that had to be his next priority now he was away from the Fridge. Get clear, go to ground, contact Natasha. The cash from his wallet wasn't going to do him any good if someone called him in to the cops. He had no doubt that SHIELD was capable of tapping calls in the area trying to pin him down.

He didn't bother trying to conceal the helicopter, it was too big and obvious to just pull some branches over and expect anyone to overlook it. He'd just have to get away from it as quickly as possible. Which meant stealing a car.

The first car he found was a farmyard jeep, and it rattled and shook when the engine turned over, but it ran. He forced himself to keep driving even when hunger started to twist his stomach, pushing as far out of the possible search radius as he could, and switching cars whenever a suitable target presented itself. The third car's tank was only half full, but there was a charging cable in the glove compartment that fit his phone. When the gas warning light made itself known he started looking for somewhere to stop.

He'd left the storm clouds behind him as he came into the edge of a run down industrial town. He parked in a communal parking area, giving him access to a couple of yards with lines blowing heavy with clothes. In short order they gave up a pair of broken in jeans and a plain black t-shirt. The hunted feeling didn't die down, but he had enough cash to buy himself some food and take a minute's breather before he needed to move again, and now he wasn't dressed like he'd escaped from somewhere.

He drove the car on fumes to the outskirts of the town, and pulled into a bar's carpark just as the engine started to shudder. The bar was old, nothing even resembling CCTV on the carpark or around the entrance, SHIELD were going to have to work hard to pick him up out here.

He stepped into the darkened space as he powered up his phone, cigarette smell strong enough to taste, undercut with old beer and an edge of piss. He grimaced at the barman as he pulled his wallet from the pocket of his stolen jeans, just wanting a beer and some food while he tried to work out who it would be safe to try to contact.

The barman didn't look at him. Didn't look away from the TV on some news channel in the corner. Clint followed his line of sight and had to sit down as he watched three helicarriers destroy each other and the Triskelion live on the News at Six.

His phone buzzed with a series of messages.

Priority one from STRIKE base: “Captain Rogers traitor, to be apprehended at all costs.”

“I thought you were on leave until healed? Be safe,” Natasha's message said, with a weeks old time-stamp, and then yesterday; “SHIELD is HYDRA. Get out now.”

Looked like SHIELD had some bigger problems than his escape. He had some catching up to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you'll join me in sending a universe worth of love and affection to Kiragecko, my beta for this monstrosity of a fic, who is just having a really shitty time right now and could do with some good karma and zen. Kiragecko, you have been my hero for this fic, and getting here has been a slog. Thank you.
> 
> If you feel like you have time and energies to leave me some comments, I'll love you all forever. This fic may feel a little open ended, but that's because it feeds back into the MCU at the end of Winter Soldier. I'd hoped to follow the character into the next few films, but honestly found the later films a little uninspiring. There is a bucket load of bits and pieces of earlier fic that fits between Reaching an Understanding and this fic, and if you're interested I'll try to get them to a readable state, but I promise no speed on that count.
> 
> Thank you for turning up, LMX


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